This past week, I received an email from a friend that I made through my activism on Metro Rail. The email stated that Houston City Councilwoman Wanda Adams would be holding a public meeting concerning flooding that had occurred in the MacGregor Place subdivision in the aftermath of the rain storms that occurred on Monday, January 9th 2012.
The email was lengthy and quite worrisome. It was clear that the MacGregor Place subdivision had taken a real beating during the January 9th rain storm. Kids had to be taken out of HISD's Peck Elementary school, and the neighboring Kipp Academy charter school by dump trucks because school buses could not make it in and out of the neighborhood. Little did I know that this was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to this local horror disaster.
I got to the meeting just as it was starting. As I was walking up to the local YMCA building where the meeting was held, a friend of mine was giving an interview to a channel 26 Fox News reporter, who was the only media person who covered the event. The Fox News internet video did a pretty good story of covering the meeting, but here are more details.
The meeting was kicked off by CM Adams, who introduced Harris County Precinct 7 Constable Mae Walker, who told the audience that her office has access to 2.5 ton and 5 ton high water vehicles for use in the event of an emergency. Her office also has boats if people are stranded. CM Adams then introduced to the audience representatives from Union Pacific railroad, the City of Houston Public Works and Engineering department (PWE), the Harris County Flood Control District, Metro, and the American Red Cross. CM Stephen Costello, father of the Proposition 1 rain tax, was also in attendance.
Benton Bond, an employee with Union Pacific railroad, was first up to the microphone. Mr. Bond gave a roughly 20 minute presentation on the events of January 9th. Specifically, Union Pacific railroad has for many decades operated a freight rail line that runs generally in a north / south direction, and which almost parallel to Spur 5 near Interstate 45, and runs close to the MacGregor Place subdivision. Mr. Bond thanked the audience for photographs and videos that people had sent in to UPRR and to the other parties, as the photos and videos enabled the parties to construct a timeline of the events of that day.
Mr. Bond told the audience that the Kuhlman gully, which runs in an east / west direction through the subdivision, then turns north towards Braes Bayou after it leaves the subdivision, runs underneath the rail yards. Mr. Bond said that it started drizzling about 6:00am on January 9th, but it started raining very hard at approximately 9:15am.
Mr. Bond told the audience that by 9:30am, Union Pacific had evidence that street flooding had already started. Between 10:00am - 11:00am, floodwaters started entering cars and buildings in the area. By 11:00am, the Kuhlman gully had reached capacity, and at 12:21pm, witnesses spotted a 75 foot long by 18 food wide culvert extension that ran underneath the Union Pacific railroad tracks that had experienced damage. The Royal Palms apartment complex, which is located along Griggs Road, is federal Section 8 housing, and is located right along where Metro is building the light rail line, was extremely hard hit, as can be seen in the Fox News video links above, which showed residents sweeping water out of their first floor units.
Mr. Bond finished up his talk and video presentation by saying that the flood was a 25 year flooding event, that the roads flooded first, then the Kuhlman gully, and he showed a photo of the upended 75' by 18' culvert that was sticking up into the air. Mr. Bond alluded to the photo, noting that the photo had gotten press coverage and had been widely circulated in the community. Mr. Bond stated (as did a spokeswoman for UPRR in the Fox News video) that UPRR had acted to cut the culvert up in order to free it and allow flood waters to drain out.
A professional engineer who was employed with Union Pacific, whose name I didn't catch spoke briefly about the rainstorm itself. He said that 4.28 inches of rain fell between 9:15am - 11:15am, and that 4.81 inches of rain fell between 9:15am - 12:15pm. This engineer told the audience that the flood was a 200 year event, contradicting the earlier statement that the flood was a 25 year event. He said that City of Houston storm sewers were designed for a 2-10 year event in residential areas and 5-10 year events in commercial areas, something I have heard said before. But the engineer stated that construction going on in the neighborhood cut down on storm capacity because water could not get into the street culverts.
Next up on the speakers list was Eric Dargan, an engineer with City of Houston Public Works and Engineering. Mr. Dargan repeated that a 2 year flooding event is considered to be 4 inches of rain within 24 hours. Mr. Dargan told the audience that there were no collapsed or blocked storm sewer lines, contradicting what the previous engineer had said.
Mr. Dargan stepped down, and Curtis Lampley with the Harris County Flood Control District stood to speak before the audience. Mr. Lampley said that the HCFCD was responsible for maintenance of the bayous, but not the storm sewers or the streets of the city. He said that the HCFCD does not issue permits, nor does it do culverts. This was in response to a question of who was responsible for what.
Next up was Metro's Dave Couch, director of capital projects for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Mr. Couch told the audience that the rainfall overwhelmed the drainage system. All storm sewer lines were in service, and he said that Metro was increasing the capacity of the storm lines. He asserted that ther was no solid runoff into the system. Were all lnlets to the storm sewer system sealed, he was asked? Mr. Couch answered, "no." Mr. Couch also told the audience that Metro was installing larger storm lines as they built rail, increasing them from their current size by three inches.
A gentleman from the City of Houston emergency management division, whose name I did not get, then came up to speak about the aftermath. He told the audience that information for a federal disaster declaration was being sent to the State of Texas. Someone had enough wits around them to contact the American Red Cross, which did all the heavy lifting in terms of helping residents who were stricken by this disaster, by providing food, medical care, and simple help. Someone there got in touch with St. Francis Xavier Catholic church, whose Priests and congregation threw open its doors and gave shelter to those who were rendered temporarily without shelter.
The floor was open for questions. One person asked whether the flow of water had been diverted from Braes Bayou? The answer was no. The next question, however, fired the crowd up. One person demanded to know whether constructing the Metro rail line had caused the flooding? One of the neighborhood pastors said that he had lived in the neighborhood for 25 years and it had never flooded. Another resident testified that the water had flowed very slowly out of the neighborhood. The rain had stopped around 2:00pm that afternoon, but the water did not drain out until after 4:00am the next morning.
In response to this, Dwight Boykins, who sits on the Rebuild Houston committee, and Houston City Councilman Stephen Costello, who showed up to pimp his new rain tax, got up to speak. Mr. Boykins said that the Rebuild Houston was not ready to start installing new drainage. When asked by what criteria projects would be first worked on, he said that the entire city was being mapped by LIDAR. CM Costello told the audience that the first thing that would be done is to commit to the current five year capital improvement plan (CIP), and he said that projects would be "needs based." Costello told the audience that the Rebuild Houston fund had accumluated $60 million so far and that it was on a path to accumulate $100 million by the end of the year. CM Costello went on to say that "what was amazing about the Renew Houston plan was that we passed a funding source without a plan," to which one woman in the audience replied that that she did not vote for Renew Houston because it was Rescrew Houston.
CM Costello went on to say that a plan for Rebuild Houston would be out on February 10th, and that "needs based" criteria would be based on 311 calls to the city, age of facilities, and traffic counts.
Talk resumed about the flooding that occurred on January 9th. The City of Houston emergency management person came back u to say that the criteria for federal disaster dollars was that 25 or more homes needed to have experienced 50 percent or more damage in terms of value. His team had already received 139 applications from home owners for assistance, far exceeding this rather low criteria, but he also said that apartments also count towards the 50 percent criteria. He went on to say that the Royal Palms apartment complex is uninhabitable and that they were expecting 16 more applications from residents. The Royal Palms apartments were a U.S. HUD based community, but he said that HUD had not given anything to them and that HUD was not financially responsible for the Royal Palms because HUD does not own the Royal Palms apartment complex. Meanwhile, the landlord of the complex was nowhere to be found, something that angered CM Wanda Adams, who had gone looking for the landlord.
HUD had told residents that they had to vacate the complex, and stories were told that food had been stolen from apartment residents. Despite the fact that HUD had told the residents that they had to vacate, HUD had no money for relocation funds. There were some residents who volunteered to relocate to some vacant apartment units up on the northside of Houston, but some people had decided to stay in the Royal Palms. Where else would they go? The emergency management fellow said that regardless of what else they would do, they needed to get their applications for disaster relief in, as they were planning on sending the City's application for federal disaster relief to Governor Perry's office the next day, and that agents from the State would be coming to the area to audit the claims before sending the application to President Obama.
Benton Bond from UPRR got up to address some more questions about the possible role of the damaged culvert in the flooding. He said that the concrete culvert that had risen up had been installed 10 years before, and had been inspected several times since installation. The last inspection was back in March 2011, He told the audience that the company was already in the process of designing a new pipe, but that one thing that was a barrier to a fast installation was that when the old pipe was installed, the City of Houston was very slow in allowing a permit for installing it. Would the City act more quickly this time to abet the reconstruction of the culvert under the UPRR rail line?
Another resident stood up to speak, saying that there had been no flooding in the MacGregor Place subdivision in nearly 50 years, and that he had seen Metro's shielding bags that covered the street gutters saturated with mud. He understood that Mr. Couch had said that they were designed to let water through, but nothing else, but those covers were holding everything back. Eyewitnesses in the neighborhood had seen Metro Rail contractors sweep debris from construction into the storm sewers, to which Mr. Couch said that Metro was responsible for the street inlets.
The meeting ended. Afterwards I spoke with some of the residents. One person said that the University of Houston, which is on the other side of MacGregor Park on MLK, had not flooded during the storm, whereas their neighborhood did, and they wanted to know why? Another woman who identified herself to me as a lawyer said to me that nothing had been said at the meeting, and she was correct. There were a mass of contradictory statements that were made at the meeting, and I told her that the reason why nobody really said anything of substance was not because the investigation was preliminary, but it was because none of the representatives wanted to find themselves on the witness stand a year from now being grilled by her as to who was really at fault for causing the MacGregor Place subdivision to not drain out after a major rain storm, when it had successfully handled Hurricane Alicia back in 1983, Tropical Storm Allison back in 2001, Hurricane Rita in 2006, and Hurricane Ike back in 2008?
I also found out after the meeting that Metro is in the process of condemning a cement and gravel plant that lies just outside the MacGregor Trail subdivision, not far from the Union Pacific rail line. Metro plans to build a rail car barn and maintenance facility at the terminus of the rail line, but the current owners are fighting Metro in court over the condemnation. Did this property in any way possibly contribute to the flooding problem?
The following Saturday, I went to a gathering of bloggers and was told that there had been extensive ponding of water along Harrisburg, where Metro has started building a light rail line, and that one downtown parking garage along Metro's rail line (Metro has dug up the streets of Rusk and Capitol) had also experienced flooding. There is more rain expected this week, which will allow for capturing of more evidence of whether or not Metro's construction is causing flooding along the streets. It also occurred to me to revisit the federally mandated environmental impact statements that Metro had to produce in order to secure federal grant funding to see what Metro and the FTA said about flooding. If those EIS studies didn't show anything about flooding, all that goes to show is that the EIS process is nothing more than a phony dog and pony show to keep people employed, rig the process to ensure the outcome that the transit agency desires (which was to build rail), and for environmental groups to use to stop road construction.
This whole episode reminds me of part of the reason why I started blogging in the first place: Because the Houston Chronicle and other news outlets decide what's news and what isn't, and Chris Moran's higher ups decided that Helena Brown's okay to sell an 8,840 square foot parcel of land that pissed off some of the neighborhood folks who couldn't be bothered to cough up their own money to buy that land was news, while the flooding out of an subdivision, possibly caused by Metro's construction of a rail line wasn't. One resident said on television that all they wanted was not to be treated like animals, and ladies and gentlemen, treating people like animals is not acceptable.
Wizard .
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http://schools.houstonisd.org/peck
It's been four months since I posted in this blog. Of course, quite a bit has happened, as the rush of time flows by, including the death of Mohammar Quaddafi and the threat of the failure of the Euro. But America has seen the rise of the Occupy Wall Street - uh, movement.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has quickly spread to numerous cities around America in the two months since it started in Zucotti Park in lower Manhattan. The press seems to have given these folks fawning coverage despite the fact that there have been numerous recorded acts of mayhem that have occurred in various cities. This has prompted a countering by law enforcement this past week to shutdown or clean up various encampments, sometimes resulting in the thuggery that astonishes. The Occupy crowd has made, at times, a chaotic list of political demands, but here is one site that lists nine of them.
But my interest was piqued. The local Occupy Houston group announced that they were holding a strategy session at the Houston Public Library yesterday, November 19th, 2011. I decided to put on my spy gear and check them out.
I arrived about five minutes after the meeting started. The event planners had announced that they had room for up to 200 people to attend the event, but about fifteen minutes after the meeting started, I did two head counts of attendees, and counted roughly 85 were in attendance. The crowd was perhaps 80 percent white, with a handful of hispanics, and a few blacks in attendance. I would have to say that perhaps 50 percent of the people in attendance were under the age of 30, but there were people across the age spectrum in attendance.
Even though I went in under the radar, I did see a handful of people in attendance whom I've met before, long time familiar figures in Houston's Progressive enslavement politics. Amongst them were: Ted Weisgal, who owns Leisure Learning, Ovide Duncantell of the Black Heritage Society, and I saw for the first time someone I've seen post on Facebook, a fellow named Egberto Willies. It was stated by one speaker that she recognized many of the attendees, as she knew them from various Progressive events.
The event started with a bunch of hand signals that were meant to help the meeting move along, since there was a lot of ground to cover. The stated goals of the meeting here:
1) Causes of the economic crisis
2) Finding concrete solutions
3) Occupy Houston – what comes next? – sustainability of the movement.
After the meeting got started, it turned out that the group intended to break out into no less than 17 different groups, all with varying topics to go over, including finance and outreach support, health care, women's issues, legal issues, "sustainability", education, prison and mental issues, economics, and dealing with the media. I had to laugh that a gathering of some 85 people were attempting to take on such a huge number of topics. A "Medicare for All" sign had been placed against the wall.
Be that is it may, the meeting then went on to people who had signed up to speak. Each person was given two minutes to address the audience. Here is a list of some of the things that were said by those who spoke:
1) One person said that President Obama thought that the Swedish economic model was good.
2) One older fellow, who wore a black shirt with a Che Guevara image on it, stated that "We are going to take control of the economic and political system!"
3) One person, addressing the legal issues facing the group, stated that the group was getting free legal representation from the National Lawyers Guild. As an aside, a dozen or so people from this group were arrested this past week. I've heard rumor, not confirmed, that there is an attorney in town who is under contract with the SEIU to represent those who were arrested.
4) The aforementioned Ted Weisgal told the audience that there was a meeting of the Harris County Green Party being held at his business offices on Monday. He pleaded with the audience to get Houston City Councilmember Jolanda Jones reelected.
Mr. Weisgal's words prompted several people to discuss the issue of whether the movement should work with already established leftist groups, but that was something many seemed to be wary about. I don't know why. They all have the same attitudes.
5) The aforementioned Egberto Willies said that the group had to be prepared for the eventuality that the camp in Tranquility Park, which David visited yesterday and posted about, was going to be shutdown. He asked the audience, "where do we go?" This prompted a lot of negative commentary, but people did seem to come around to Mr. Willies' point.
6) One young man said that, "We are fighting a war on selfishness! We are fighting a war on greed!" I had to stifle a laugh. Ayn Rand adherents would no doubt be laughing too.
7) Talk devolved on what Occupy Houston could do. One woman of Asian descent told the audience that there were many foreclosed homes in Houston. She asked how many could be turned into co-ops? How many homes could be taken over by people squatting in abandoned homes? She suggested to the audience that they should look into RICO prosecutions that have been used against drug dealers and crack houses, and that they should find those crack houses to squat in and take over.
That was just a smattering of what was said. There was considerable concern on outreach and perception of the movement, which was strange because at the same time people were making suggestions that they protest in front of the tall buildings of the oil and gas companies, march through River Oaks, and others were concerned that the 99% / 1% mantra wasn't mobilizing people. Talk arose of what was to come after capitalism, but there were so many things that people talked about that there wasn't anything coherent in terms of strategy that came out of the meeting. One person lamented that nothing had happened, and that there had been no change at all over the last two months since the Occupy movement had started.
There were printed materials available at the meeting. This group has printed 10,000 copies of a broadsheet style newspaper, of which I grabbed about two dozen copies. Another handout was from the Houston chapter of Moveon.org, highlighting a site called Rebuild the American Dream. One was a hard copy print out of the reflections on the Occupy movement by Bob Avakian, who is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA.
A fire alarm went off in the library at 3:40pm, causing the meeting to have to break up because the building had to be evacuated. A few people muttered that this was done on purpose, but I doubt that. I definitely caught the whiff of smoke coming from somewhere. The group decided to migrate their moveable feast to the front of City Hall. I decided not to follow them, as I had not had anything to eat all day and I went to grab some chow.
So what to make of all this? David says that this group is not a threat. I came away with the impression that all this is the same stale old stuff that the Left has been pushing for 100 years now - no more wars, neuter those evil corporations, while politically demanding an ever more vast centralized welfare and entitlement state that condemns everyone to a new form of slavery. What's amazing is that looking at this "Contract for the American Dream" printout in front of me is how much of this has already been enacted by the all powerful federal government, but that doesn't seem to faze the Move On folks, nor these Occupy folks. This movement decries police brutality used against them, without seeming to realize that this is exactly what they are wanting to impose on everyone else.
I don't know. One day, maybe, this crowd will wake up to the wisdom of Frederic Bastiat, who wrote that the State is the great fiction whereby everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else. Maybe one of these days, this crowd will volunteer to work at a charity or perhaps write a check to help support them. But after watching this meeting today, I sorely doubt it. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même.
Wizard
Yesterday, the winds brought news to the Wizard of a townhall meeting that was being conducted by the City of Houston and the Metropolitan Transit Authority at the Ripley House on Navigation Street. The subject matter had to do with Metro's construction of a light rail line down Harrisburg, and so it was that though the Wizard had had a long day of laboring away for a living, that I decided to head over to see what the commotion was about.
To wit: Metro incorporated a rail line on Harrisburg back for the 2003 rail referendum to appease the Hispanic voting bloc, who had threatened to vote against Metro's rail plans if the government agency did not build a rail line that went through Hispanic areas of town. And so it was that Metro incorporated a rail line down Harrisburg to appease the wolves and sharks.
But Metro decided not to submit the rail line down Harrisburg for consideration for a federal funding grant from the U.S. FTA. Why, because there were problems from the beginning with running a rail line down Harrisburg. One obvious one was that the East End of Houston is where the ship channel and Port of Houston are, as well as much industry. The area has many environmental problems, which would have been unearthed during an FTA public inquiry because all federal grants must get environmental clearance from the U.S. EPA in order to be eligible for a federal grant. Hence, Metro would have to build this rail line out of its own monies.
That however, wasn't the most visible problem with running a rail line down Harrisburg. Union Pacific Rail Road (UPRR) operates a rail line that runs through the East End, and runs several dozen freight trains that traverse Harrisburg every day. Any Metro rail line would have either go over the UPRR rail tracks or under them. That is what this public meeting was about. Would Metro build the rail line over or under the UPRR rail tracks?
The meeting was packed, standing room only, with maybe 200 or so people showing up and cramming into a small room at the Ripley House. City of Houston Mayor Annise Parker conducted the meeting, with Councilmembers James Rodriguez and Ed Gonzalez also in attendance. City of Houston Public Works director Dan Krueger was there, but did not speak, but the other noteworthy speaker was Metro's CEO, George "Good Government Guy" Greanias.
Parker and Greanias presented attendees with computer visuals of what an overpass and what an underpass of a rail line running under the UPRR rail tracks would look like. Members of the audience argued both for and against each proposal. I was amazed to hear that Metro and the City, which having gone so far as to put orange construction barrels for three miles down Texas Avenue and down to the 5500 block of Harrisburg, and having torn up and repaved parts of Harrisburg itself, have not yet figured out what they are going to do about the UPRR rail line.
Mayor Parker made it clear that she was agnostic about which option Metro chose, but Ma Parker can afford to be agnostic. She has the gun, and screwing a few voters in the East End isn't going to matter to her to much, not in comparison to losing political support from the construction mafia wolves who are a big part of Metro's self promoting, agency created mess. Time tables were given; if the overpass bridge option was chosen, it would cost $32 million, but if an underpass was chosen it would cost $43 million. Mayor Parker told the audience that the Councilmembers present had agreed to give up two projects out of the City CIP (capital improvement plan) to come up with $12 million in monies for building the bridge. Another idea floated would be to create (yet another) TIRZ (tax increment refinancing zone) along Harrisburg, with the hope that increased tax values would be captured and spent on the project. One proposal was to try to lobby the Harris County Commissioners into forming a TIRZ along Harrisburg.
Questions were fielded from the audience, with one woman who was holding a baby questioning in detail about the financial assumptions of the TIRZ, and another person saying that he hoped that the rail line would promote tourism in the East End! Mayor Parker remarked - memorably - that:
There's no magic - It's just a rail line. The market will have to decide whether to put money into the area.
The audience was told that if the overpass was built, that the rail line would likely be completed by 2014, while the overpass would be completed in 2016. Many complained about how long Metro had taken in instigating the construction of rail. Mayor Parker remarked on how uncooperative UPRR was - oh, the horror! - and George Greanias stated that legally that it was doubtful that UPRR had any legal right to operate their rail line along the street. Parker made it clear that she was playing hardball with UPRR, but UPRR wasn't backing down. UPRR is not some podunk, small time Ma and Pa business that would be easy for a big city Mayor to bully around, but rather a huge corporation that earns tens of billions of dollars in revenue hauling billions of tons of freight around every year. When I listened to Mayor Parker speak as she did, thoughts of Atlas Shrugged went through my mind, this time with a big city politician trying to whip up on a railroad that provides an incalculable service to Houston, all in the name of a government agency that has the power to call for elections whose intent is to aggrandize itself by spending billions of dollars of other people's money.
And for what? That, gentle readers, is the true question. One elderly gentleman asked why the federal government was not involved? That question wasn't answered at the meeting, but in addition to the environmental problems posed, it turns out that the ridership forecast for Harrisburg is only 7,750 boardings per day by 2015. 7,750 riders per day for a rail line that will cost about $500 million, which will take away 2 of Harrisburg's 4 lanes unless the City and Metro widen the street, and which will result in 28 of 40 intersections being blocked off unless plans have been or are changed. People getting onto Harrisburg or off from Harrisburg will only be allowed to make right hand turns only. Meanwhile, the #50 Harrisburg bus route has been attracting 4,400 - 5,500 boardings for years, and George Greanias stated at the meeting that Metro is trying to identify $20 million in annual operational cost savings, presumably to pay for the rail line. And where is that $20 million in cost savings going to come from? Most likely Metro is going to end up cutting bus service, as they have before.
After the meeting was over, I drove for several miles along Harrisburg and looked at the blocked off lanes, the orange construction barrels, and the businesses whose access to the street have all been blocked off. It struck me that the evening's public meeting was held on Navigation, a street nearly a mile away from Harrisburg, that everyone had gotten to the meeting by cars even with the price of gas at nearly $4 per gallon, and for which light rail would be useless to get to.
It's really sad to see Harrisburg, and indeed Houston itself, go through so much agony for so little return. But such are the joys of modern day American Progressivism, which being the heir of a movement that was launched 100 years ago and which has continually promoted the use of State power ostensibly for the public good, has long since done all the productive useful things that government could conceive of doing, but has created a pile of interest groups in the process and who now demand to continue to be fed at the table like wolves and sharks. To try to continue pacifying these groups, today's Progressives insist on resorting to grand projects with big price tags, like light rail, but which have little or no value, and try to use Democracy as a way to justify it all. That may be a reason why companies like Exxon Mobil are leaving the City of Houston for the distant suburbs, and why Houston only garnered 20 percent of the population gains of all of Harris County between 2000 and 2010.
What Houstonians see with Metro is a microcosm of what Americans see happening in Washington, and today's Progressivism will do nothing but impoverish everyone.
After all, there's no magic in it - It's just a rail line....
Wizard
This past week, Houston's Metropolitan Transit Authority kicked off a series of 24 public "workshops" that are being held over the next six weeks around Houston. Metro's stated purpose for doing so is:
METRO is hosting a series of public workshops to discuss the future of transit in our region. We’re working with communities throughout our service area to learn where service is needed and how we can modify or add to existing service to better serve the needs of the community.
Metro goes on to invite Houstonians to:
Share your vision for tomorrow. Attend a METRO public workshop to discuss the future of transit in your community.
So, the Wizard did. I attended the workshop held on May 12th on Richmond Avenue. I really didn't expect anything new that I didn't know already. The Metroettes (employees of Metro who attend public events put on by the agency) were out in force as usual. A heavy set man, who lived in the area but whom I had never met before, said to me at one point that it seemed like many people who were in attendance were Metro employees. I told him he must be new to the world of Metro.
There really wasn't much to report that Examiner reporter Mike Reed didn't cover. Yes, the Kim Slaughter did make a comment about transportation coming down to roads or rail, and yes City of Houston Oliver Pennington did say that half of Houstonians were opposed to any rail.
Metro was soliciting comments and input, which of course doesn't matter to Metro because there are other things that matter much more to the agency than the opinions of one or two dozen Houstonians who show up to each of these meetings. I'm willing to bet $100 that no more than 1,000 residents show up to all 24 of these so called workshops, which goes to show how relevant the agency really is to most Houstonians.
But I digress, because there's something else that needs to be asked about Metro's public workshops that's more important than the agency sending out its PR department on a political fishing expedition to test the public mood, and that is, quite frankly, why is the agency bothering to do this in the first place?
Seven and a half years ago, Metro spent $6 million in sales tax dollars before the November 2003 election (and arguably broke Texas law which prohibits agencies from spending tax dollars to promote agendas) to politically sell Houstonians on a comprehensive regional transit plan, the centerpiece of which was to be 64 miles of light rail, along with more HOV lanes, 50 percent more bus routes, and so on. The voters approved the plan, much the delight of both the Houston Chronicle editorial board and to Metro itself. But that was supposed to be the plan!
So what the hell is Metro doing out here now? After all, Metro has been around for 32 years now, but for some reason Metro needs to learn how to modify existing services for transit? This is the sort of stuff that people get when you have a government agency, which has a gun at its disposal, but whose real purpose is to be the plaything of the ruling political coalition which has captured local government.
The older I get, the more I think that Metro, which was voted into existence in 1978 (which came just a few years after a previous failed attempt to vote it into existence), is just one of thousands of manifestations of the 20th Century Progressive vision that America had to have more democracy. Government had to take over more and more functions in America, and all of this had to be legitimized by democracy. So, the big government loving Texans of the late 1970's wrote section 451 of the Texas Transportation Code, such that agencies that were voted into existence would be ruled over by boards which could call elections for transit plans, in much the same way that government school boards call for elections to sell bonds to build expensive shiny new schools.
Rorschach has said over and over again that one of the big problems that those who fight statism have to face is that every time something comes up for an election, the liberty types fighting elections have to get lucky every single time, while all the promoters of statism have to do is get lucky just once. And so it is when you set up lots of boards and agencies, and grant them the power to call elections. If the interest groups fail to get what they want at the ballot box, there's always the next election where you can try, try again. Once the interest groups hit the political jackpot, win their election and get what they want, the door slams shut and the voters are not allowed to look back no matter how rotten the government acts, and in the process the voters who show up during that election effectively commit future generations to pony up for what they've done.
And so it has been with Metro. Since the November 2003 election Metro has blown through some $700 million in local and federal tax dollars, but has only "just started work" on three rail lines, according to Ms. Slaughter. But hey, guess what? Metro now feels the need to go out into the community and - get this - get their opinion!
Thoughts turn to Erik Ibarra and Lauren Barrash, and their struggles to provide private transportation to Houstonians. The market and their customers tell them how they are doing, and they pay attention because they don't have guns at their disposal.
Now, the Texas Legislature does have a provision whereby agencies and boards can be subject to sunset review, but once agencies and boards are voted into existence, they have interests of their own, and so it was that Metro got itself exempted from being subject to sunset review. Meanwhile, the Texas Transportation Code offers no provision for voters to dissolve Metro, no matter how egregious the agency's acts are.
And so Houstonians are now treated to the spectacle of Metro, going about town, holding their workshops with their posters sitting on easels and tripods, giving long suffering Houstonians who bother to show up and chat with the squads of Metroettes yet another sermon on the alleged necessity of needing a government transit agency - an agency which after 32 years, still needs "to learn where service is needed and how we can modify or add to existing service to better serve the needs of the community."
Addendum edit (5/23/2011): Kevin links to this entry adding that
It's quite the approach to "customer" service!
But that's the whole point to this rant. Metro doesn't have customers. Who needs customers when you have stakeholders?
Wizard
The City of Houston plays host this week to the 2011 NCAA Final Four basketball tournament. It's been years since I've been interested in college basketball, and the fact that this event is being held in town hasn't changed my lack of enthusiasm for college hoops much, but I digress.
The NCAA tournament is being held at Reliant Stadium, while free music concerts are being put on at Discovery Green. More events are being staged at the George R. Brown convention center. The Houston Chronicle, which has been an apologist for statism for decades, is trumping up how the Metropolitan Transit Authority is planning on putting buses on the Main Street rail line route to accommodate the anticipated extra riders on to go back and forth between these government buildings and parks at taxpayer expense.
Now that my anti-government rant part of this blog entry is over, I'll ask why it is that Metro is having to put buses on the route to handle the extra passengers, as one of the political rationales for building rail on Main Street at taxpayer expense was that doing so got rid of thousands of bus trips every day along the corridor, right? But, the Chronicle is reporting that Metro is going to run two rail car trains along Main Street, instead of one rail car.
But a question needs to be posed. Why stop at two rail cars, if Metro is anticipating extra transit riders along the corridor?
Well gentle readers, the Wizard is glad you asked that question, because it turns out that if Metro were to try running trains with three rail cars on them, instead of 1 or 2, then the agency runs into a bit of a problem. You see, the trains would then be too long for them to operate along Main Street.
Here's the deal: The rail cars that Metro operates were built by Siemens. As the Wikipedia entry for Houston's Metro Rail notes, the rail cars are 96 feet long, so a two rail car train is 192 feet long. A three car train would be 288 feet (or 96 yards) long, and those numbers do not include any connections or hitches between the rail cars. Furthermore, the train stations have to be longer than the rail cars in order to accommodate potential passengers. The train stations that are envisioned by Metro to handle trains with two cars for the other corridors are roughly 220 feet long.
The problem posed with trains that are three rail cars long is that as every Houstonian knows, the streets in downtown Houston are laid out in a grid, and the length of the grid blocks in downtown Houston are right around - you guessed it - 100 yards. That means that if Metro were to try to run trains that were three rail cars long, the trains (and the train stations) would potentially be blocking vehicle traffic that would be running in an east - west perpendicular direction to the trains running in a north - south direction. There are almost certainly similar problems to be found in placing train stations along the other corridors where Metro wants to build rail.
What this means is that Metro is boxed in by the current built environment in downtown Houston with regards to how many rail cars they can run with one train. That in turn will cause a ripple effect that will limit the passenger capacity that will affect any and all expansions to rail in Houston. Train stations will be hemmed in by the layout of the current street grid, and the only way to get around such problems posed by building rail at-grade would be to completely cut off streets where they now intersect with any of the streets along which Metro wants to run rail. Hence, that in turn would mean cutting off vehicle mobility along any corridor that Metro wants to build rail.
Of course, such issues can be gotten around by elevating rail, or building subways, but then you are talking about a 2-5 fold increase in the price tag to taxpayers. Alternately, Metro can attempt to run trains at-grade with greater frequency (i.e. with shorter headways), but that in turn might cause more traffic disruption, and it would cause Metro to have consider adding more power capacity on the grid to run more trains.
And so it is that Metro will be running buses on my dime to abet the capacity of Metro's Main Street train to ferry out-of-towners to go have their entertainment.
Wizard
Last Friday at an event, a reader reminded me that I had not posted since October 4th, and it was high time the Wizard got off his rear and wrote something. So, the Wizard decided to turn his gaze 170 miles west towards the City of Austin, and started contemplating the madness, chaos, hell storms, and deep in the night swindles and trickery that will ensue once the 82nd session of the Texas Legislature is mustered and is called to order come January 2011.
By now, gentle readers will know issues the Texas Legislature will have on its agenda: How will Republicans govern with a huge majority of 99-51 in the Texas House? Redistricting the district boundary lines for both state and federal elected officials will consume much time. Ever since the State of Arizona passed its legislation on border issues, there has been much clamor on the political right to address the Texas-Mexico border. There will be a renewed push for photo identification for voters, but the perhaps the biggest issue that is really making everyone nervous is what the Texas Legislature will do about a possible $20+ billion shortfall in the state budget.
A brief digression. Texas, like nearly all other states but unlike the runaway federal government, has a state constitutional requirement that its budgets are balanced. States do not have printing presses at hand, unlike Congress which has the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve at its disposal. In one of the early American Republic's first economic crises, the panic of 1837, many American states went into default. The fallout from that economic recession was nearly all U.S. states adopted fairly strict budgetary rules against any kind of official long term borrowing. On paper, the books have to balance.
So how did the State of Texas find itself in such a fiscal mess that it is in now? Perhaps the best source for overall budget issues is to visit the Texas Budget Source website. There, one can find trends in State government, as well as what the State spends on general line item appropriations. The website also has links to the budgets of cities, counties, school districts, and other special purpose districts. What a website!
A general overview of the state budget quickly shows that the "mommy" issues of state funding of schools and health care predominate the state budget. The two year, 2010-2011 state budget was set during the 2009 Legislature at $182 billion. $75.5 billion of this was state funding of education, with $53 billion going to local government school districts and the other $22 billion going to universities and higher education. Another $60 billion went to "health and human services", meaning mostly government funded medical care. Of that figure, nearly $34 billion came from the federal government in the form of federal taxpayer monies that were redirected by Congress to the state. So, of the $182 billion state budget, government schools and HHS funding (primarily of health care) amounted to $135 billion or nearly 75 percent of the state budget. Moreover, 37 percent of the state budget, some $68 billion, came from Congress.
Other item of interest is that the Texas budget source website clearly shows that it is government funding of health care and schools that are the drivers of the budget. The HHS budget has grown from $30 billion in 2000-2001 to nearly $60 billion over the past 10 years, while state funding of education has grown from $45 billion to $75 billion over the same time period. The state population has grown from some 20.8 million in 2000 to some 25 million in 2010. An online inflation calculator shows that inflation from 2000-2010 was 28 percent. Putting a combination of population growth and inflation pressures reveals that overall state funding of schools has somewhat outstripped population growth and inflation, but state funding of health and human services has way outstripped population growth and inflation.
Combine all this spending growth, along with their massive political constituencies, and put it together with a slow economy, and presto! the state gets a big budget deficit.
A big story that made the headlines over the past week was that in order to close the $20 billion gap in state financing, some lawmakers were considering the idea of having the state drop out of the federal Medicaid program. The New York Times story noted that early indications were that dropping out of the program would have a tremendous financial ripple effect.
Consider this: Progressives manage to pass a U.S. constitutional amendment in 1913 imposing an income tax on Americans. Then over the next 100 years, a vast array of programs get enacted by Congress, whereby Washington distributes hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the state governments, whose own residents were the ones who paid those dollars in the first place. So, the game is often set up whereby state governments roll over and do what Washington says, if only to capture those dollars for their stated purpose. In the process, the states effectively became nothing more than appendages of the federal government.
As a Tea Party person, one question to be asked is this: Is Medicaid constitutional? I hate to pester people with this, but no doubt the progressives would reply that, yes it is! Why? They'd probably hang their hats on the usual suspects - the ever expanding Commerce Clause and Congress's taxing powers. Not to mention that as long as the New York Times thinks that me being forced to pay for somebody else's nursing home care is a good idea, and because it's a good idea in their opinion, then gosh darnit, it's constitutional!
Medicaid, as the Wikipedia entry notes, was enacted in 1965, as part of the massive wave of Great Society programs. Whereas Medicare was envisioned as yet another social insurance Ponzi scheme add on to the Social Security Ponzi scheme, Medicaid was a straight shot welfare program for the poor. Medicaid is jointly funded by Washington and the states, and on paper the states administer the programs. Participation in Medicaid by the states is voluntary, but once again, if a state government decides not to participate in Medicaid, then effectively that state government is surrendering the income tax monies of their residents to Washington, and neither the citizens of the state nor the state government itself will recapture back those dollars when the state government refuses to participate in Medicaid. Those federal general revenue income tax dollars will almost certainly go to another state or they will be reallocated to another program. In other words, the effect of Medicaid is that a big federal government program leads to big state government, and setting this arrangement up the way the Progressives did was done on purpose. After all, when you've gamed the system this way, why would any state bother to not throw in the towel and start participating in Medicaid?
One big item that was only glossed over in the Times article was what recently transpired in American health care - the passage of Obama Care. The (misnamed) Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2009 legislated many things, as any 2,700 page long piece of legislation would, and one big thing that Obama Care legislated was an expansion of 20 million Americans who would eligible for Medicaid, $1,300,000,000,000 per year federal budget deficits be damned and state governments be damned. In other words, one of the things that Congress did was dump a massive unfunded mandate on the states and told them that it was their problem to deal with it. Since Texas has eight percent of the country's population, it is quite likely that the state will be compelled under Obama Care to add another 1-2 million residents to Medicaid under Obama Care, and when you're facing a $20 billion budget deficit already, then hard choices have to be made.
When seen in this light, the floating of the idea by Texas legislators of dropping out of Medicaid entirely deserves a new look. It's not as though Medicaid (or Social Security or Medicare for that matter) is some great achievement. Reason magazine has further reading here, here, and especially this article where some studies show that getting your health care taken care of by Medicaid often results in worse outcomes!
So what would happen if the state of Texas were to drop out of Medicaid? Of course the federal government would then keep several tens of billions of dollars of Texas residents income tax dollars, but the state would be free of federal mandates. The state would then have liberated its citizens to look for private solutions (at the cost of ransoming up its citizens' federal income tax dollars), or the state could figure out some new solution to deal with the issues that Medicaid purports to address. The state would regain much greater control over its own fiscal destiny, not being driven by a major mandate from a overbearing Washington that refuses to get its own fiscal house in order before dumping more mandates on Americans in some fit of Cloward - Pivenism.
Wizard
This past week, the Wizard spotted what seemed to be a little noticed or commented on article in the Houston Chronicle, which addressed the issue that the Houston City Council is debating a proposed rate increase by Center Point Energy. The article states that the Houston City Council is expected to vote on a rate increase for electricity usage charged by the utility.
The Wizard finds it strange that a local government would have the authority to vote on whether a private business should increase or decrease the price it charges for it's product, but government meddling in the electrical utility industry has been rife ever since electricity itself was discovered and harnessed over 120 years ago. Perhaps the most egregious interference in the industry was the long standing granting of monopolies to certain utility providers, something that started early in the 20th century. The industry was largely stuck in this natural monopoly mode until the late 1990's, when reform proposals opening up the provision of electrical power finally were enacted, allowing buyers to choose from many sellers of electrical power.
The rationale for rejecting the idea that the provision of electrical power was a natural monopoly came from the fact that certain large scale businesses found that they were able to generate their own power via cogeneration. The delivery grid, however, often still remains in the hands of one entity, in this case Center Point. One sticking point that came up during the attempts at deregulation or re- regulation was the issue of stranded costs and whether a utility was to be compensated for them. In Texas, utilities that had substantial stranded costs did in fact win authorization to charge for compensation for stranded costs.
But I digress. What was interesting in this story was what that an attorney that was hired by Council to review the rate adjustment:
said rates could go down by as much as $182.8 million. He said CenterPoint is seeking too high an investment return, and other city experts say the utility should consider taking an "austerity adjustment" to share the burden of tough economic times.
Then there's this gem towards the bottom of the article:
The biggest chunk of the utility's increase the city takes issue with is $52 million meant to cover pension-related expenses and liabilities. CenterPoint is trying to inappropriately recover investment losses on the backs of ratepayers, Hall said.
So, on one hand Houstonians have a City government that has raised water rates that it will charge residents by 35 percent over the next four years, and now has a group of politically connected engineers who have put a charter amendment on the November 2010 ballot, which would impose a new drainage levy. But on the other hand, the City is arguing that Center Point Energy must not be allowed to raise the rates it charges for electricity and should take an austerity adjustment due to tough economic times.
Translation, do as we say, not as we do, because the City needs the money while Center Point Energy must do without. This is just another reason why Houstonians should read my blog entry and vote against Proposition 1.
Wizard
The Tea Party movement has been (with justification) been labeled as just another branch of the Republican Party. The Wizard thinks, however, that the real fidelity of a Tea Party person should be to the principles embodies in the United States Constitution.
Long time readers will know that the Wizard spent some nine months of his life back in 2007 - 2008, working with the Floodway Coalition of Houston, in their desperate property rights battle against Houston City Hall, to roll back revisions to Houston's Floodway ordinance, which if it were have been allowed to stand would have resulted in a $2 billion - $3.5 billion regulatory taking by the City of Houston of 10,000 properties along Houston's creeks and bayous. The ordinance was perpetrated by former Mayor Bill White (a Democrat, now running for Governor), and the Mayor was strongly backed by Republicans on City Council like former CM Toni Lawrence. The floodway regulatory taking represented a bi-partisan oppression of Houston's citizenry.
One of the Floodway Coalition's attorneys who conducted the legal battle against the City's uncompensated regulatory takings of the property of Houstonians was Bruce Mosier. Mr. Mosier, a long time property attorney and a Democrat, currently works for Harris County. The Wizard personally saw how Mosier defended the property rights of Houstonians (read one notable case here), many of whom were completely unaware of what had happened to them, and how important it was that a group of citizens and their legal counsel were working for them.
Yesterday, the Wizard attended the League of Women voters event at the George R. Brown convention center. I was wearing my Houston Tea Party society shirt, but I was also wearing a tag stating that I was supportive for Mr. Mosier. At one point I was stopped and harshly attacked by one woman, who I could tell was a Republican from some buttons she was wearing on her shirt. She said the Republican was well qualified, but the Wizard strongly stood his ground. There was no way that I was going to be budged from my support of Mosier.
The Tea Party movement needs above all to remember that you need to watch what individuals who are in office or on the bench actually do on issues while they hold office, no matter whether they have an (R) or a (D) behind their name. The Wizard will never support Toni Lawrence, for example, if she ever again tries to get elected. It is when it comes down to the issues where the party labels become murky and break down, and it is where politicians stand on issues that really matter. Just ask Delaware Senator Mike Castle, whose loss to Tea Party upstart Christine O'Donnell this past week rocked the national Republican establishment.
So, the Wizard is going to make his pitch to his Tea Party and Republican friends not to vote straight ticket, but to cross party lines and vote for Bruce Mosier for County Civil Court at Law No. 4 of Harris County, Texas in the November 2010 election.
******
The Wizard's crossing of party lines to support a political or judicial candidate should not leave open my motives, but rather it should open the question of the information that the citizenry has available to them when they are being asked to vote in elections. Someone recently told the Wizard that the upcoming November 2010 elections in Harris County are going to feature the longest ballot in the history of the American Republic. There are literally over 70 judicial races (civil, criminal, family court, and state district), as well as congressional races, state representative races, school board races, a bond issue out in Katy Texas, three propositions on the City of Houston ballot, as well as the race of Texas Governor. The Wizard himself didn't even know that there was the judicial position that Mr. Mosier was running for until a few months ago, and if someone as active as the Wizard didn't know, then what hope does that leave for the citizens who choose not to be active?
Some of this is self inflicted. The State of Texas has created this complicated, bifurcated system of justice, whereby judges are elected in the state. Civil cases are shunted off in one direction, while criminal cases go down another pipeline. Then the civil cases are subdivided into several different categories. Then top that off with all the political races, and it quickly becomes apparent that the political classes are dumping a horde of questions on the citizenry.
In the face of this, it's easy for citizens to simply throw up their hands and not participate, perhaps thinking that it doesn't matter (or make a difference) in many cases how they vote or what they do. For many who are not politically active by choice and do not have their noses pressed up against the glass, the short cut they take in the face of this overload of politics and information is to simply to roll into the voting booth, vote straight ticket along the party line, and then they're outta there. If someone like myself crosses party lines for a candidate, they are immediately thought of with suspicion by those who seek to rope me in on the party line, and find that we have to explain ourselves when in fact it should be the other way around. It is the politicians and parties who are the ones that need to be explaining themselves.
The Wizard has long resigned himself to the insanity of the decision making process of politics, having long ago encountered the public ignorance literature, as well as the public choice literature. The Wizard also started reading through the Anti-Federalist papers, where the Founding generation experimented with various forms of government before settling on the U.S. Constitution. Some of the questions the Founders had to confront had to do with justice, and whether it was better for judges to be elected or appointed? There is a tension in American political life, whereby it was declared that Americans have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, but on the other hand there is a concept that the power lies with the people and that government rules with the consent of the governed. An answer the Founders came up with was to divide power, keep many matters of liberty off limits (through the Bill of Rights) and to temper and refine decisions through several different means, such has having two legislative bodies and judicial review.
The Wizard suspects that a big problem for American political theory in today's America is that many are thinking that they were (or are) not consenting to what's been shoved down their throats over the past several years (the TARP, the ARRA, ever expanding federal power, liberal victories that last forever while conservative ones that come with an expiration date, etc), and that they are preferring Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The tension between the two ideas has once again reared its ugly head, and what remains to be seen is whether all this can be resolved peacefully. The Wizard foresaw years ago that the tensions of our times might come to pass.
Wizard
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." P. J. O'Rourke.
One of the issues that will be coming before City of Houston voters in the upcoming November 2010 elections will be the interest group backed Renew Houston charter amendment. The Wizard has held off commenting on the amendment for some time. The amendment has passed muster with City of Houston secretary Anna Russell's office in that she has given blessing that amendment backers have - on their face - produced the 21,000+ valid signatures necessary to place the amendment on the ballot. Much of the Wizard's tardiness in writing on the subject had to do with the fact that I had stopped writing for a while, but there were other aspects of the charter amendment that I wanted to study up on before posting something substantial about the topic.
The charter amendment can be read here. The Wizard will address each subject in due order.
Does Houston have an overall drainage and street maintenance problem?
That is entirely a subjective question and one the Wizard will not answer here. Yes, the Wizard has noted that there are streets in Houston that do need repair. Interestingly, some of these streets happen to be where Metro wants to built light rail lines. The Renew Houston backers state that the City's infrastructure is old and out of date, but effectively what Renew Houston's backers are really saying is that the City and all the interest groups down at the City Hall haven't bothered to keep up with infrastructure for decades. Now whose fault is that? Are they saying that Annise Parker has spent her entire career in City politics without having addressed this issue before? Why has Houston spent an inordinate amount of time and money building sports temples, redoing all the streets in downtown Houston, building new courthouses, and with Metro wanting to build rail lines? In other words, the Renew Houston camp is effectively telling the populace that Houston has been misplacing its priorities.
Setting that aside, Houston and Harris County already have rules on the books for dealing with drainage. CM Stephen Costello, whom the Wizard has heard speak three times now, has stated that the Renew Houston initiative was not meant to deal with the flood plain problem. He also insists that the City does not have enough money to deal with enforcing rules that require the creation of detention ponds and basins, a claim that the Wizard finds laughable. How much money does it cost to hire someone to drive around the City to simply inspect and report whether developers have installed the required detention, as well as maintaining ditches or storm sewers, and for the City's legal department to take some action? The Wizard suspects that this is probably not all that much, indeed the usual case is that developers are to pay for permits and inspections out of their own pockets. Yet miraculously, the City seems to find plenty of resources to harass the populace for all kinds of other petty issues, but somehow we're being told a story that the City cannot find resources for enforcing detention?
The Wizard shares the view of Ed Browne, who has stated that Houstonians need to tell the City to quit giving variances to detention requirements or simply letting detention slide by on development after the fact, before interest groups simply throw their hands up in the air and cry that they need more money for drainage. It would also help if the Harris County Toll Road Authority, as well as TX-DOT were to fully abide by City of Houston floodplain regulations.
CM Costello has pointed out that the City has three primary resources for funding streets - the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), the SNAP (Super Neighborhood Action Plan), and via neighborhood petition. The City gets money from the ad valorem property tax, state and federal sources, as well as money from Metro. The Wizard recently stated that Metro owes the City $130 million, but some sleuthing from Tom Bazan recently has hinted that Metro actually owes the City some $390 million.
Addendum: The Wizard has received word that a newspaper here in Houston will be running a story about the City of Houston's unbilled commitments to Metro sometime this week.
The Politics of Renew Houston
The Renew Houston charter amendment was put into play after the November 2009 City of Houston elections. The issue of the state of Houston's infrastructure was not discussed at all by any of the 4 major candidates during the 2009 Mayor's race, nor was it much of an issue in any of the Council races. Obviously, CM Stephen Costello, who is a hydrologist by trade and whose firm has about two percent of its business with the City, has been the primary face of the amendment by carrying water for the engineering constituency. Those gentle readers who are Republicans and see the world through the lens of Republicans = good, Democrats = bad, need to remember this come November 2011.
Mayor Parker has given her endorsement to the amendment, but the Wizard has heard CM Costello state that there are to be no exemptions to the drainage levy, not for non-profits, charities, churches, school districts, or any other organization. The underlined article notes that
[Mayor] Parker also said she opposes exempting any property owners from the drainage fee.
"I don't believe anybody should be exempted. Drainage affects everybody," she said. "If there's an exemption for one category, automatically, someone else is going to have to pick it up. ... I'm going to lay it all out for council and then we'll walk through it."
In other words, it is highly likely that there are interest groups already lobbying for exemptions from the Renew Houston levy, and yes Houston has seen its City Council give price discriminatory preferences to certain interest groups with regards to water related issues, and it is highly unlikely that the adoption of the charter amendment will result in any let up of lobbying efforts by various interest groups for relief from the levy.
CM Costello has stated on stump speeches that it is the intention of amendment backers that there is to be a website that will detail all of the projects that are to be implemented with amendment monies. The intention is to divide the City into roughly 50 zones, with projects to be ranked for priority in each and every zone. At an Houston Property Rights Association luncheon on June 3rd, 2010, on member of HPRA asked CM Costello who would be the ones determining what projects get done, and Costello stated that it would be Public Works and Engineering that would be making the call. Another asked whether Costello could name 10 possible projects that would do the most to alleviate drainage in the City, and Costello said he couldn't answer that question. So far, no website has been produced for this $8+ billion project, and even if one were, there is no doubt that political pressures will come into play with regards to deciding which projects were to be implemented.
The charter amendment also throws in a provision to assess a direct payment for infrastructure from real estate developers on all new development that occurs within the City, over and above the initial $125 million revenue floor that is to be generated by the drainage fee. In practice some developers already do this (the Buckhead developers of Ashby Highrise threw in $500,000 in infrastructure improvements as part of their development), but the charter amendment institutionalizes this. The Wizard shares Tory's view that the assessment on new development will slowly have knock on effects over time, but isn't so certain about whether the City can arbitrarily whack new development with outrageous impact fees. Provisions in Chapter 395 of the Texas Local Government Code and due process could temper that.
The Renew Houston charter amendment will go through the process of adoption that every charter amendment does - at the ballot box. City of Houston voters, or at least those who feel motivated enough to bother to show up on election day in November, will vote via the democratic process whether to increase fees (or taxes - more about that later) on each other. The Renew Houston amendment does have a sunset provision in section C, that if the amendment is adopted that the charter amendment can be only terminated after 20 years have passed, after public hearings have been held, and only at the vote of two-thirds of City Council members. Next year the City Council is set to expand to 17 members, ergo it will take 12 members to vote to sunset the amendment.
Defenders of Renew Houston's arrangements for voting the levy into existence while only allowing possible undoing of the levy through Council action once every 20 years may try to defend their actions by pointing to the Proposition 2 revenue cap charter amendment, but Prop 2 stated that Council could exceed revenue growth through inflation and population growth - the Council merely had to go to voters. But given that the City has fought this battle in the courts and that Bruce Hotze, who is the plaintiff in the case, has told the Wizard that the City doesn't bother to abide by Proposition 1 (which limits property tax increases) anyway, so any comparison between Renew Houston and the earlier revenue limiting propositions really doesn't apply.
What this really means as a matter of practical politics is that future City Councils will be granted the authority to consider once every twenty years whether to vote to give up this funding, something that at the current time will be amounting to roughly one sixth of current City of Houston property tax collections. Folks, no one person or group is ever going to be able to muster enough political muscle or pressure to get two thirds of future City Councils to vote to repeal this amendment, unless the levy is set so high that political pressure becomes insurmountable. If Renew Houston backers want voters to impose a new levy on their fellow citizens via the ballot box, then they should have incorporated a sunset provision that would have allowed for voters to sunset the charter amendment, and not leave that decision in the hands of City Council.
Otherwise, for all practical purposes, voters are being told to vote a levy on themselves on all land in the City of Houston, one that will go on in perpetuity, for a mega-project whose scope is not defined. And mega-projects have a habit of spiraling out of control.
The finances and legalities of Renew Houston
Houstonians need to understand that Renew Houston has a specific revenue floor provision in the amendment, which at first is meant to raise at least $125 million from drainage fees alone in it first year of implementation. Amendment backers have been telling the public that the rate of the new drainage fee levy will be $5 per month on a 2,500 square foot house that sits on a 5,000 square foot lot (about $520 per acre per year for residential property), while commercial properties are to be levied at $90 per month. However, the charter amendment language does not have any language in it setting rates for any class of property, whether improved or not, nor are there provisions that set the levy for any fixed length of time. Again - the language stipulates a revenue floor that is to be generated by the drainage levy. This is in fact a wide open levy. There is nothing stopping Council from making this levy $10 per month on households, $20 or $30 per month, other than political pressure, nor is there anything stopping council from practicing price discriminatory behavior on this scheme.
Strictly speaking, the Renew Houston levy can be looked upon as either a property tax or a fee. The key here is that the levy falls on the amount of square footage of property, as well as the amount of permeable area on the land parcel. It is not an ad valorem tax because the levy is not dependent upon the value of property, nor any improvements on property. The initiative has a provision that Proposition 1 ad valorem tax increases do not apply to the initiative. At the first public meeting that was held on Renew Houston in the Heights back in May 2010, the Wizard asked CM Costello directly whether the charter amendment conflicted with Proposition 1 or 2? Costello pointed his finger at me and told me that it did not, and no, Renew Houston was not a tax!
Harris County Tax Assessor candidate Don Sumners has provided a table that indicates that the levy is the equivalent of a 13 percent tax increase, were the levy to be done as a property tax increase. The numbers can be quibbled with slightly, but the general analysis is still valid. In other words, were the Renew Houston levy to be done by equivalent increase in property taxes, the property tax rate in the City of Houston would immediately rise from 63.875 cents per $100 of taxable property to roughly 72 cents per $100, with possibly higher rates to follow.
On July 8th 2010, the Houston Chronicle ran a story on Renew Houston that mentioned that engineer Allen Watson, who is a board member of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, was active in promoting Renew Houston. Given this is the case, it is reasonable to infer that if a board member of Metro was actively involved in trying to get this amendment passed that Mr. Watson in fact speaks for the agency as a whole.
And why would Metro be interested in seeing this pass? Because the agency is supposed to be handing over 25 percent of its sales tax revenues to its member Cities, but if the interest groups promoting Renew Houston were to succeed in getting the petition passed, then the City will be in a much stronger position to waive its portion (73 percent) of the sales tax that gets allocated to the City, effectively allowing the City to rebate that back to Metro - not that the City has been collecting all its monies anyway. Doing that would put Metro in a much better position to be able to float billions of dollars in bonds to build light rail lines. In theory, none of this is supposed to be happening, but money is fungible. As a practical matter citizens have no real control - or ability to enforce - whether politicians or governments collect monies for one stated reason, but in fact allocate them for other purposes, and there's no reason to expect otherwise that the City will in fact use all monies brought in by the new levy from Renew Houston in the manner that amendment backers are advertising. Reaffirmed State law confirms the fact that the City of Houston can in fact transfer monies collected by this new drainage levy to the City's general fund, so any talk about monies collected by the levy going into a "lock box" is bunk. Politicians always make such claims, and they transfer monies at every level of government.
Opposition to Renew Houston
There will be a campaign launched to oppose Renew Houston. The opposition will be bi-partisan, as the Wizard has been privy to communication within both the Democratic Party and amongst Republicans opposing the measure. The levy is regressive, open ended, and its means of implementation was designed to attempt to avoid political accountability by dumping the question of the levy increase directly onto the voters, rather than have politicians have to face the political consequences of arguing for and imposing a tax increase directly. Once implemented, the levy will politically be very hard to repeal or sunset.
But as one friend of the Wizard stated to me recently, the backers of Renew Houston have been tone deaf, politically, on pushing this through on Houston residents in a slow economy. The Wizard could be tempted in voting for Renew Houston, if in exchange the Houston City Council were to come up with a viable reform plan for curbing the real problem the City faces - that of pension liabilities to former and current employees. Absent that, the Wizard has decided to oppose the amendment and tell the backers of Renew Houston, no thank you, I'm voting NO to Proposition 1.
Wizard
Addendum: Last week the Wizard promised to start publishing on a regular Sunday schedule. I did in fact work on this entry over the weekend, but time and length of this post caused me to miss my self imposed deadline. The Wizard will be back on schedule next weekend!
Addendum #2 (September 28,2010): This is the ballot language for Proposition 1, at least according to the Harris Votes website. Note that there is no mention of the new levy, nor of the fact that voters will not be allowed to vote to repeal the measure in 20 years:
City of Houston, PROPOSITION NO. 1
CHARTER AMENDMENT PROPOSITION
Relating to the Creation of a Dedicated Funding Source to Enhance, Improve and Renew Drainage Systems and Streets.
Shall the City Charter of the City of Houston be amended to provide for the enhancement, improvement and ongoing renewal of Houston's drainage and streets by creating a Dedicated Pay-As-You-Go Fund for Drainage and Streets?
FOR
AGAINST
Addendum #3 (October 26, 2010): The Houston Chronicle has reported that the City of Houston's general revenues (from taxes and fees) have increased from $1.4 billion in 2004 to $2.1 billion in 2010, while the overall budget (which includes the enterprise funds such as the airports) has gone up from $2.6 billion in 2004 to $4.05 billion in 2010. So why does the City need another major revenue stream when it's revenues have gone up by 50 percent (non-inflation adjusted) over the past six years?
I grew up poor. I rode the bus until I was 24 years old. Once I got my first car, I never looked back.
Houston City Council member at-large, Jolanda Jones, at a Bill King speech, July 29th, 2010.
------------------------
Things flew fast and heavy this past week on the Metro Rail front. This past week, the Wizard attended two public talks on Metro Rail. The first was put on at the headquarters of the Harris County Democratic Party on Tuesday night, July 27th. The second meeting was a presentation put on by former Houston mayoral candidate Bill King, held at a Galleria area restaurant. While the Wizard attended both events, the Wizard did not bother to stand up and ask any questions at either event. Mostly the Wizard took notes and let the speakers have their say.
Before going any further describing what was talked about at both events, the Wizard is simply going to outline for gentle readers what the overall situation is with Metro and the agency's desires to built light rail.
As things stand now with Metro Rail
1) The five rail lines envisioned, totaling 30-31 miles, will probably end up costing roughly $4 billion plus to build.
According to Paul Magaziner, Metro currently has about $100 million in cash - that's it. The State of Texas requires that Metro maintain at least $60 million in cash on hand. If Metro intends to issue more bonds, then those bonds will have to be certified by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office, and that's not assured.
2) At the meeting with Harris County Democrats, Metro chairman Gilbert Garcia told the audience that Metro had spent $640 million on light rail since the November 2003 election. He did not go into details or breakdown for the audience on how that money had been spent. However one thing is obvious: Despite having spent all that money, Metro still hasn't laid down one yard of rail track on any of the rail lines.
3) Tom Bazan has been religiously capturing sales tax data for both the City of Houston and Metro since 2001. His latest spreadsheet, which he updates monthly, can be downloaded here. Tom Bazan's data shows that Metro is on a path to collect roughly $490 million. In contrast, Metro forecast in it's 2008 SFEIS for the Southeast Corridor rail alignment that it would collect $592 million in sales taxes for 2010, a shortfall of 17 percent.
Metro's entire financial analysis is extremely aggressive. For example, the spreadsheet offered states that Metro would collect $804.8 million in sales taxes in 2015.
4) Metro owes the City of Houston some $130 million in general mobility funds, debts that had accumulated during former Mayor Bill White's term in office.
5) Even if Metro manages to get all federal grants, Metro will have to cough up at least another $2 billion in local funding to complete this project.
Bill King's speech - July 29th 2010
Mr. King's presentation can be viewed online here. Several highlights include that Metro stated in its financial analysis that the agency would not be obligated to turn over 25 percent of its sales tax monies for general mobility street construction purposes to member cities after 2015, which is rather presumptuous since an election has to be held on this issue in 2014 according to the 2003 referendum. The agency admitted in its environmental impact statements that making turns with its trains along the Richmond / Wheeler University rail route would result in high levels of noise. The aforementioned sales tax and farebox recovery figures are wildly optimistic, with farebox recovery rising from $60 million in 2010 to $132 million in 2015, and $167 million in 2020. Mr. King reiterated his call for lowered or eliminating fares on Metro's buses. King's analysis is that 20 percent of all trips taken in the Houston area are for work trips, and Metro can only hope to attract a few percent of those work trips. King expressed concern that the agency board has already tied itself with contracts over the project.
King stated that there were several things that Metro could do to gain efficiency. One was to sign long term contracts for natural gas as a fuel source.
As an aside, a number of people who were in the audience were from Metro, which is standard operating procedure for the agency. Metro usually sends employees to public meetings on Metro Rail, both to keep an eye out on the public mood and to pack meetings with "supporters" of their plans.
The HCDP event - July 27th 2010
Metro's new chairman, Gilbert Garcia, was joined by the new CEO, former City controller George Greanias, and long time Metro executive John Sedlak, at the HCDP event. The three men took turns at the microphone speaking, at which was their constituency.
Gilbert Garcia was chairman of Mayor Annise Parker's 2009 campaign. He's an investment banker, affiliated with Henry Cisneros's money management fund. He told the audience that he cut his teeth in politics working for Walter Mondale's Presidency bid in 1984 in New Jersey and Texas. Mr. Garcia is a Yale graduate, making him a member of what Angelo Codevilla calls the ruling class
Garcia went on to tell the audience on how he was in Atlanta, where instead of a $75 cab drive, he took a MARTA train for $2, ending with a rhetorical "if Atlanta can do it, then why can't Houston?" Garcia reported that morale was low at Metro when he first started. He introduced himself to an employee, who told him, "I've never met a board member, much less the chairman." Garcia stated that agency leadership was eating, sleeping, going all out to get the $900 million in federal grant money. Garcia stated the current board's intention to complete all five rail lines, and asserted that Houston was limiting its future by not doing so.
Actually, the Wizard thinks that Houston is not limiting itself by not building light rail. It is the political classes and those who are politically connected to the City and to Metro whose futures are being limited by not building light rail.
George Greanias then got up to speak. Greanias told the audience that he had not been active in the 2009 Mayor's race, and had not endorsed anyone. A few criticized that Greanias had no transit background, but Greanias himself said that was a good thing.
Greanias stated that "nothing will shape Houston like Metro, with the exception of HISD." He told the audience that 30 percent of work trips into downtown were ferried by Metro, and 20 percent of work trips to the Medical Center were via Metro. Metro now has GPS installed on all buses, and the agency washes all buses every night with recycled water. Greanias took the occasion to announce (in advance) of a letter Metro received from the Harris County District Attorney's office that allegations from former City controller Lloyd Kelley had been cleared, as well as that Metro had received a Record of Decision from the US-FTA for the Wheeler / Richmond University rail line. Nothing was said about a recent story by Texas Watchdog about an HISD study comparing efficiencies of HISD's bus fleet verses Metro's.
Greanias said that when he came to office that Metro employees did not feel connected to management, and that he vowed that Metro would keep promises it made to the public. Grenias asserted that "we have to build this rail system!"
Greanias said that "we've made it more convenient for people not to use transit than to use transit", in reference to Metro's surrendering of sales tax monies for general mobility funding. John Sedlak reiterated this remark later. It became clear to me that there is a mindset amongst the Metro brass that they don't seem to count the fact that streets that are fixed up with Metro's sales tax dollars are also used by Metro's buses. Greanias asserted that Metro Rail on Main Street replaced 11 Metro bus routes, something the Wizard knows to be false. There used to be four bus routes directly running on Main Street that were truncated after the rail line was put into place.
John Sedlak, Metro VP took to the podium. The Wizard had not seen Mr. Sedlak in two years, and it appeared that Mr. Sedlak's age is starting to show a bit. He has to be pushing 60 by now.
Sedlak told the audience that rail was easy to use, verses climbing up the steps of a bus. Strollers and bicycles could easily fit in rail cars. Advertising on buses and trains was a local policy issue and that Metro had to work with the City of Houston and Scenic Houston. There was a City ordinance in effect that prohibited advertising on City right of ways, and Metro's bus stops were located in those right of ways. Sedlak said Metro was not sure how much money could be raised, but Allen Kepler, Metro's first chairman, had decided long ago not to advertise on buses, as this was a branding issue. The agency had kept to that ever since.
One attendee asked about parking on the North Corridor rail alignment, stating that they were not sure where to park at Northline Mall. She asserted that if Metro wanted to encourage people to ride trains, then they needed to have lots of parking (really?!). Sedlak replied that Metro was looking at leasing parking space around the old mall area and was in talks with HCC about parking for the Main Street rail line, as well as the garage at the Ensemble Theater.
The issue of parking also came up with the Airport Express buses. Sedlak told the audience that Metro "loses a ton of money" running the Airport Express (but spending $640 million and not building any rail isn't?), but was looking at expanding the service to stop by nearby downtown hotels in an effort to pick up ridership. The same woman who asked about parking near Northline Mall stated that BART had problems with car parking and suggested that Metro build a better parking lot nearby the Airport Express staging lot.
One man asked the three speakers, "how will you defeat obstructionists like John Culberson?" The question drew some laughs from the audience. Greanias told the audience that Metro needed to persuade the rest of the community, and to convince the people around Culberson" on rail. Sedlak said that one key for Metro was "getting something done" on rail. In Dallas, he stated, they're asking "who gets it next?" Well, maybe. Garcia asked whether Metro should go to the airports, apparently not realizing that according to the 2003 bond election, Metro was going to the airports.
Another audience member, who happened to be a cyclist, mentioned that he could often beat buses when going from one place to another.
Cost overruns and media relations were addressed, and one audience member mentioned that HPRA President Barry Klein has been harping on cost overruns. Greanias told the audience that "if Barry wants buses, then what he'd really want were rickshaws". Greanias said that the new board is offensive when it comes to the media. FOIA requests are being handed out. Agency PR folks had spoken to Houston Press editor Margaret Downing, and noted that some recent articles by the Press had not been so snarky.
Greanias brought up the issue of ridership, which has been down for the past two years. Metro is starting to look at some of the edges of some routes to examine why patronage on some routes are low. Why? Greanias brought up the idea of issuing vouchers for taxis, rather than run a 45 foot bus along such routes. A lack of shelters along bus routes was cited, as colder weather affects ridership. Changing the fare box structure was acknowledged. Incidentally, Greanias told the audience that the FTA does not allow Metro to count riders ferried to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo for national statistics purposes.
HCDP chairman Garry Birnberg asked the Metro leadership what Democrats could do to help? One answer was to get ready for an eventual election on the general mobility fund. Another was to ask, "what's the other sides solution?", and that largely summed up the meeting.
Afterwards, Richmond Avenue merchant Daphne Scarbrough told the Wizard that she had run into former blogger and now Metro board member Christof Spieler at a Rice Design Alliance meeting. Ms. Scarbrough asked Christof about the orders for Spanish rail cars, which has gotten the agency in hot water with the FTA? Mr. Spieler told Ms. Scarbrough, "Daphne, we're doing everything the FTA tells us to do." No doubt about that. Sam Staley would be expecting nothing less.
The Wizard kept quiet during the HCDP meeting and simply took notes. What emerged from the HCDP talk was an agency leadership that is still fiercely ambitious. Yet it had also become clear that nobody at the agency really knows where they are going with this project. The agency "was looking" at parking at Northline Mall? The agency "is looking" at whether to complete building these rail lines to the airports? That is not what the agency said it would do back in November 2003 at the bond election.
And more to the point, Wendell Cox just wrote that what really matters if you are going to use state or agency power to build public infrastructure, that it is the outputs that matter, not the inputs. And we need to keep that in mind with everything we do.
Addendum: The Wizard is going to start publishing on a regular schedule - probably posting on Sunday evenings.
On Friday, July 16th 2010, the Houston Property Rights Association welcomed Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos as its speaker. The Wizard had set up a Facebook event for Attorney Lykos's event, ergo her speech managed to attract several dozen new faces that we had never seen before. It was a successful event.
Mrs. Lykos didn't really need an introduction to the audience, as she is a well known local and state politics. She has spent her working career in law enforcement and criminal justice, starting as a police officer, then working her way through law school. Later she became a criminal court judge before eventually winning election as Harris County District Attorney.
The Wizard didn't take detailed notes on Lykos's speech, but The Wizard found Lykos to be a refreshing speaker. After having spent many years attending public meetings and lunches, and hearing untold numbers of windbag speakers and audience members talk at such events, Lykos proved to be direct and to the point. When several audience members raised their hands and started going off tangent on issues that had little or nothing to do with the topics being discussed at hand, as many people are won't to do, Lykos would get straight to the point in dealing with such people. She would summarize their remarks, answer them, and move on to the next person. She is the type of person who doesn't like people wasting their time or her time and the Wizard doesn't doubt that this comes from Ms. Lykos having spent years as a judge sitting on the bench.
Several matters Lykos touched on were:
1) The Harris County District Attorney office employs some 300 attorneys and support staff that sift through scores of thousands of cases every year, whereas Lykos told the audience that Cook County (Chicago) has more than three times as many personnel with only twice the population of Harris County.
Without having a thorough knowledge of the situation, it's hard for the Wizard to judge whether hiring more prosecutors and support staff would result in better criminal justice, or would it result in what would effectively amount to zero marginal productivity from the extra prosecutors and staff.
2) The 2010 budget for the DA's office was reduced by the Harris County Commissioner's Court from $60 million to $54 million. It blows the Wizard's mind that the DA's budget is that small. The DA's office is only 4 percent of the Harris County commissioners budget.
3) Lykos briefly addressed the issues of drugs and rehabilitation. Lykos argues that we do not do enough for rehabilitation, and that is socially costly as falling back into that kind of life often causes one's life to go downhill. On drugs, Lykos is a conservative. She flatly stated that anyone who thinks that drug legalization is the answer to the drug issue had not seen anyone on methamphetamines. Nobody brought up the crack pipe policy, though in all fairness nobody probably had that issue on their minds beforehand.
4) Lykos cited a number of prominent cases, including various sex offender cases where her office had worked with a number of local, state, federal, and international law enforcement bodies to bring people to justice. One person made a criticism on whether this was good use of tax dollars, but Lykos stated that criminals needed to be shown that fleeing would not save them from justice.
5) A regional crime lab. Lykos campaigned on support for a regional crime lab. The Wizard has written some thoughts on whether a regional crime lab would be better than what we have now for crime labs or whether we would merely be transferring the problems we have today to a new regional lab. However, Lykos did say that the City of Houston and Harris County were in negotiations over a regional lab, but more importantly she stated that the cost of a new lab would only be a few million dollars.
Just days after Lykos spoke to HPRA, the Houston Chronicle carried a story reminding the public that the Houston Police Department still has a backlog of over 4,000 rape test kits dating back to 1996, on top of nearly 1,000 new criminal cases that await DNA testing. Then came the case of Allen Wayne Porter, which DNA evidence showed could not link him to a rape crime where an eyewitness identified him as being the perpetrator.
The Chronicle story on Lykos's call for a temporary DNA lab mentioned that the Houston Police Department applied for a $1.1 million federal grant to help clear up the backlog of DNA cases under HPD's jurisdiction. That's right folks - only $1.1 million, and somehow we can't find the money to clear up backlogs of cases for rape victims. The Houston City Council recently approved a $4.2 billion budget, Metro owes the City of Houston $160 million in back payments but is still too busy wanting to build trains, and America has a federal government that is now running annual deficits of over $1 trillion per year!
Lykos mentioned that if we were to rectify this injustice to criminal victims (and the accused) - and this clearly is an injustice - then Houstonians are going to have to start lobbying Houston City Council and the County Commissioners to get this backlog taken care of.
The Obama administration and the left have long claimed that they are for "social justice" and making America a "fair" society. Lost amongst those claims however, is that the first claims - made before any others - as to why men instituted government is to protect property rights, to make sure that people can sleep in their beds at night in peace, and to seek justice for those who have been wronged through criminal acts perpetrated by others. Yet somehow we can't seem to find a few comparative nickels and dimes to better do criminal justice, while untold billions are spent through federal entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, bailing out failed corporations and Wall Street, contracts, millions of government jobs, wars, and redistributed through the tax codes. And the Wizard thinks that something is really wrong when we've lost sight of that.
Wizard
The Houston Chronicle carried the story On July 8th, 2010, that the Renew Houston charter amendment campaign had reportedly garnered 30,000 signatures which they turned into the City Secretary's office for verification and certification for going on the November 2010 ballot.
The Wizard has heard CM Stephen Costello speak twice on the Renew Houston initiative, and intends to blog about the matter, but before writing about the charter amendment campaign, the Wizard decided to quote Renew Houston itself as to why the promoters are pushing this agenda:
Houston is an aging city. Over 60 % of all drainage and streets are past their useful life; 80% will be past their useful life in the next 20 years. When a street is assigned for re-construction, it takes the city 12 years before the work will commence due to lack of funding. ...
Americans are seemingly bombarded left and right with stories of aging infrastructure that hasn't been worked on for decades, that of course needs billions of new tax dollars over and above what governments already spend to be successfully maintained. At the same time, America has witnessed spectacular infrastructure failures in recent years, including the failures of the levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. President Obama's new head of the FTA, Peter Rogoff, made a speech in Boston in May 2010, where he stated that the six largest local government transit agencies in America had $50 billion in deferred maintenance of their rail lines, and now Houstonians are being told by an interest group campaign that 60 percent of Houston streets and drainage are past their useful life.
So, this begs the question: Why is it that governments, whether local, state, or federal, seemingly fail over and over and over again not to do needed maintenance on existing infrastructure? The easy answer to such a question would be, "What do you expect Wizard? Of course the gummit don't do things right! Why should this be any different? Why do you want to waste our time on this?" Well, if that's your answer, then maybe we should be privatizing public infrastructure. After all, this is an endemic problem!
But as though on queue, last month the Wizard received his most recent issue of The Independent Review. In the issue, economist Dr. John Bratland addresses the neglect of public infrastructure through comparing how a private entrepreneur handles capital (and capital goods), verses how politicians and bureaucrats spend their political and bureaucratic capital.
Dr. Bratland's article makes for great reading. Without going through the entire article, the Wizard will focus on the high points of what Bratland is saying.
Market signaling: Bratland notes that there is a distinction between capital and capital goods. Capital could be construed as everything that an entrepreneur has at their disposal in order to make judgments that help maintain, and hopefully increase, the income and profit stream of the enterprise. This includes labor, land, cash receivables, whatever. Capital goods are individual pieces of capital, including that land, labor, finance, machinery, etc. Bratland points out that the entrepreneur operates in a framework of contracts and private property rights that help guide the entrepreneur towards making the best decisions, and that the entrepreneur often faces competitive pressures and operates under some uncertainty about the future.
Bratland goes on to say that entrepreneurs will incorporate decisions on the purchase and maintenance of capital goods, based on whether they will maintain or increase the income stream. Entrepreneurs may decide, for example, to defer maintenance for a while on capital goods, if the entrepreneur judges that there will be little or no effect on the overall income stream. But, Bratland points out that successful entrepreneurs always incorporate maintenance costs into maintaining the capital goods in their purview. The entrepreneur will get market signals and feedback that help the entrepreneur make decisions on maintenance and replacement of capital goods.
Verses no market signals: Needless to say, none of this framework exists in the world of public infrastructure maintenance. Bratland points out that there is no market of exchange when it comes to public infrastructure and there are no private property rights. Most importantly, there is no market signal to indicate that a street, a freeway, a sewer line, drainage culverts, or any other element of public infrastructure needs to be maintained or for that matter be replaced! There is no income stream available to tell governments that maintaining existing infrastructure is the correct thing to do.
Politicians and bureaucrats will have, and pursue, conflicting agendas upon assuming office and during the course of their careers. Politicians may come under political or competitive pressures to keep taxes and expenditures low. Politicians may or may not be in a position to obtain substantial monies for infrastructure maintenance via the legislative process for their districts. Politicians will also spend monies on infrastructure if they can perceive that it will enhance their power, career goals, or affect roll call votes in other issues. Politicians may perceive for example, that they can gain more votes or power through voting to devote monies towards health care or education, rather than infrastructure maintenance. Politicians or bureaucrats may deny maintenance monies to other politicians, bureaucracies, or geographical areas, if it were to meet certain goals. Bureaucrats may have career goals that include obtaining jobs in academia or the lucrative private sector, which often have little or nothing to do with maintaining public infrastructure. Politicians and bureaucrats often correctly perceive that they often can gain more power, prestige, or favorable press, through building new infrastructure over maintaining existing infrastructure. Both politicians and bureaucrats may or may not be particularly publicly spirited in their actions.
But most of all, bureaucrats and politicians really are not in a position to be able to weigh whether building new infrastructure or maintaining older infrastructure is the best use of public dollars, since there is no market mechanism to guide their decisions. Making such decisions inevitably involves making some judgment about opportunity costs and social welfare, of which there are no real answers. Considering all these factors, as stunning as this sounds, neglecting existing infrastructure for years or decades and letting it go to pot could be - and often is - the best political outcome from the perspective of people who are involved in the political process.
Next, the Wizard will address the Renew Houston charter amendment.
Wizard
About two weeks ago, Houston Chronicle columnist Rick Casey carried the story of the resolution of a scandal over at HISD, concerning the work performance of Kashmere High School principal Mable Caleb. Chronicle reporter Ericka Mellon wrote on how the HISD probe had widened to reaching Key Middle School. Employees have been implicated in an investigation that found evidence of cheating on state tests, profiting off student fundraisers and nepotism.
The Wizard generally doesn't get interested in what goes on in government schools, mostly because even though I pay taxes to HISD, the fact of the matter is that HISD is a government school district that has 200,000 students, some 20,000 employees, and a mob of interest groups. There really isn't too much I can do to have any influence on what goes on there. Government schools are a mess that are now effectively beyond redemption, with no end of apologists to speak up for them. Spending on government schooling has skyrocketed over the decades, but SAT test scores have effectively been either flat or declining over the past 40 years.
But none of this is what really caught the Wizard's attention. What caught my eye was that Rick Casey reported that HISD Superintendent Terry Grier got a phone call two days before Christmas from Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, as well as State Representative Harold Dutton, and HISD trustee Carol Mimns Galloway. As Mr. Casey's story made it clear, the phone call that Ms. Jackson Lee gave Mr. Grier was not exactly about wishing Mr. Grier a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
The responses to Mr. Casey's story were telling. Reader "mimi3" wrote,
The arrogance and gall of SJL to think that she can interfere in HISD affairs and tell the superintendent how to do his job is just disgusting. Obviously, she has been doing this for quite a while. It will be interesting to watch the fur fly if Grier continues to stand up to her!
This reader has a very interesting point to bring up, namely what was Sheila Jackson Lee doing yelling at the head of a local school district, presumably telling him to call off the dogs on an internal investigation into possible malfeasance within a district school? After all, HISD does stand for the Houston Independent School District.
Well, that begs to start asking what influence does Congress have over our schools? On paper, not much. 90 percent of government school funding comes from local taxpayers, and state governments. It is state governments, through their education codes, that compel kids to attend school, and set out the overall government school agenda. However, this 10 percent level of federal funding is up from the 6 percent that it was back in 2000, before President Bush came along and decided he needed to show voters that he cared about their kids through compassionate conservativism.
Where Congress does have influence is through money. Thanks to lots of payroll and income taxes, along with all that borrowing power, Congress has passed a slew of mandates and enacted plenty of programs since the 1960's. The 2009 federal budget, which had $1.5 trillion in red ink, included a $96 billion infusion from the ARRA, a $53 billion injection of federal funds into local school systems in the form of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which included $5 billion for Mr. Obama's new federal program Race to the Top. Other long standing federal directives include the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which will dish out $12 billion in 2010, but has gotten criticism as yet another unfunded federal mandate amongst other issues.
So, the federal government's role in education has mostly been one of being a money dispenser, not as the primary rule maker. However, even that relatively small role is more than enough for a member of Congress to take an interest in a local school district if he or she chooses. After all, he who has the gold gets to make the rules, ergo Mrs. Jackson Lee might well have threatened Mr. Grier with cutting off federal dollars for HISD under the Stabilization Fund, from Elementary and Secondary Education Act funds, or from IDEA. But ultimately, who knows what was said, other than those who participated in the phone call? All we know is that Mrs. Jackson Lee did make the call. And why did she do it? Because she could, that's why.
The point being made here is that liberals, or others who justify federal intervention into schooling if for no other reasons than that it attracts votes, cannot expect the world to work as planned after they enact such programs. If you advocate federal intervention into government schooling, then don't be surprised when a member of Congress decides to take an interest in what otherwise is a local problem that has nothing to do with federal acts that purport to remedy some alleged social deficiency. This episode shows the dark underbelly of federal funding of local government schools, and it is something that few people care to behold. The only way we can truly rid of members of Congress not having any leverage over schools at all is to legalize freedom and pare back a massive federal government. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before another member of Congress, or a federal judge for that matter, tries to browbeat hapless local officials or citizens into doing their bidding.
Wizard
Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction... The instability, injustice, and confusions introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.
James Madison The Federalist Papers, #10
So, the Texas primary season is over, or at least it is for those whose races did not leave them in a position to face a runoff. But with the season being for the most part over, there comes the usual grumblings and wailings from my friends about low voter turnout whenever Americans hold elections. Several months ago, after the City of Houston elections, there was the same complaint - some 15 percent of registered voters in Houston bothered to vote in the City of Houston general election for Mayor and Council. So, Felicia Cravens asks, "why don’t people vote in primaries?"
The Wizard has a confession to make. Years ago, I used to get incredibly upset about the same issue. "Why don't people vote?", I'd go screaming to myself. Don't they understand! It matters so much! It's the end of the planet if they don't vote! A woman named Jackie Juntti complains on Facebook of suffering from the battered voter syndrome.
At the same time, the leftist "progressives" have been complaining recently that America is "ungovernable", which really means that they are going absolutely bananas because the Democrats hold three out of five seats in both the House and the Senate, as well as the Presidency. Yet incredibly, the Democratic Party has not been able (yet) to push through Obama Care, nor have they been able to push through Cap and Trade.
So what has led America to this sorry state of affairs? Better yet, one might want to ask whether this is a sorry state of affairs to begin with?
First of all, we need to go back and reread the words of the Founders. Madison had done his homework when he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787. Madison knew from reading history that establishing America as a pure democracy would create a serious danger whereby the fiery passions of the public would end up invoking whipsaws of policy, egged on by the mob. The turbulence that lurks in all of us would be erupting constantly. Peace and tranquility, which is a precursor to happiness and progress, would be a rarity.
Therefore, Madison and the rest of the Founders rendered a Republic. But more importantly, they also knew that even though many Americans would declare that they love liberty and freedom, their actions would often belie their words. So, being ten steps ahead of the rest of us, as they always were, the Founders created a political system that made it very difficult to get anything done. Two bodies of Legislators, along with an Executive, and all the affected interest groups, all have to come to some kind of agreement that this is the way in which things are going to be. Passing legislation on big issues that affect large swaths of the populace in America is like trying to herd around a bunch of cats. You have to corral them all in order to get something done.
"But wait, Wizard!", comes the objection. And yes, I know, somebody out there is going to come up with some point where some President or some lower level public official did something quite easily. But people who do that are missing the forest for the trees. How many times have Presidents in America tried to push through universal health insurance? Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton, and now Obama? Remember, compulsory universal health insurance was something that was enacted decades ago by just about every other wealthy country in the world - except the United States.
That in turn should lead us to examine the political regimes of other countries. Why is it that other countries found it relatively easy to enact such legislation, whereas in America, the progressives have tried over and over and over again to reach the summit?
In the United Kingdom, for example, we don't have such lofty notions such as judicial review of laws, but rather we find such concepts as Parliamentary Supremacy. In other words, Parliaments in Britain and some other countries can make laws on just about anything they damned well please, and they can't be questioned by courts. In contrast, in the United States we have a Bill of Rights and judicial review. Governments can't always do what they want and sometimes legislation is struck down. In other words, there are more barriers in the United States to doing things, but it also means that each branch of government has to pay at least a little bit of attention on whether other branches of government will stomach what each other is doing.
Moreover, we also inherited from Britain the idea of single member representative districts, whose officials are usually elected by a plurality, an electoral system otherwise known as winner take all or first past the post. SMP style electoral systems can produce some stunning results. In the 1997 UK general elections, the Labor Party led by Tony Blair, came to power off of an election where the Labor Party won 43 percent of the votes, yet got 63 percent of the seats in Parliament. Because the Labor Party got over 50 percent +1 seats in Parliament, they got to make all the rules, and since Britain is a unitary state and not a federal state like the United States is, nearly all the power is embodied in one political body - Parliament. Parliament also controls well over 90 percent of all taxation spending in the UK, with town councils being responsible for the petty remainder. To put things bluntly, if Britons decide to elect a Labor government, they are going to get more government than they would if the install a Conservative Party government. In other words, it matters who gets elected.
In contrast, because we have a federalized nation, the political power is far more spread out and atomized in the United States. There is a central government in Washington, but there are fifty states, and thousands of towns and cities. The federal government has taken in some two thirds of all taxes since WWII, but state and local governments are responsible for the other one third. States and local governments also set rules on policing, criminal justice, land and water use matters, transportation, amongst many other issues. The result is what Madison intended - a political system where an attempt to preserve liberty and freedom to put into place by limiting the power of any one political actor or body to do damage to others. Californians may run themselves into bankruptcy and enact all kinds of kooky rules, but the fact that California is doing so is not necessarily going to harm other states or localities. Furthermore, Californians can move if they get fed up with their state of affairs and go elsewhere. In other words, our Founders set up a system where they tried to make it where it didn't quite matter so much who is in charge. How many times have you heard the old phrase, you have a choice between twiddle dee dom and twiddle dee dee?
So, we have single member legislative districts, but does it have to be this way? Of course not, and in many countries it isn't. In Germany, voters cast two votes - one for a district representative and one for a political party. 50 percent of the seats in the German Bundestag are apportioned by single member districts, and the other 50 percent are apportioned by how many votes each party receives in the election in what is called a mixed member proportional electoral system. One result is that there are more political parties in Germany, but another result is that in order to obtain a ruling majority, parties often have to form coalitions with other parties, whereas in the United States that doesn't happen. One of the two parties wins a majority and wins power, but even then, the ruling majorities in Congress are often uneasy majorities, as can be witnessed in the liberal / blue dog coalitions of Democrats that Nancy Pelosi presides over in Congress. Pelosi has big problems holding her coalition together, which again makes it hard to get things done.
Then there's the United States Senate, where as everyone knows, a band of Senators can filibuster legislation. Yes, Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, making him the 41st Republican senator, mattered and it mattered greatly. Some elections do matter more than others, and sometimes when the balance of power is very precarious, as it is right now in Congress, a Senator's power can rival that of a President in certain matters. Sometimes being a Senator can be a fine thing to be, but the Senate is also the repository of where the voice of the minority is to be heard in American government. And if that minority is determined enough, it can be enough to bring matters to a halt.
But to give an example of how things could be different in American government, take the election of John Culberson in November 2008 in the Texas 7th congressional district. Mr. Culberson beat Michael Skelley by a margin of 56 - 42 percent. So a Republican wins the district, but what about the Democrats who voted against him? How are their views represented, or ask yourself whether theirs was a wasted vote? If it was a wasted vote, then why bother to vote in legislative districts where parties have incentives to gerrymander to gain as many seats as possible, packing votes into the seats held by the minoritity and cracking the districts held by the majority, thereby marginalizing the votes of many.
In a proportional representation system, there would be other ways of capturing the sentiment in that vote and people would find voting more meaningful. If there would have been five members apportioned in each district instead of one, the outcome might have been that three Republicans and two Democrats would have been elected to represent the 7th district. One thing Americans might want to consider is adding more seats to our legislatures in an effort to better capture the public sentiments of a growing population. The U.S. Congress has been stuck at 435 members for quite a while now. America gets trade offs - we lose the far edge sentiments of the left and right, but America gains stability and coherence in its government.
This state of affairs also leads into the question of whether any particular election had any meaning or not? I'll be up front: Most people are not going to know the difference, nor are they going to care, who sits on the Harris County Probate Court #3, or some other random court. In general, the higher up the political ladder, the higher the turnout rates are going to be for an election because there is more at stake. More people are going to turn out for a U.S. Senatorial election than one for a local Justice of the Peace court, because a U.S. Senator has more power than a local JP does.
Ask yourself this: In any one particular election, ask yourself what's at stake? Does a particular election have any meaning, or is it basically meaningless? How much power does a particular office holder have? In the November 2009 City of Houston general elections, what was at stake was who was going to be sitting on the deliberative body of a major city. Under Houston's form of government, the mayor has the power, hence one should expect greater competitive pressures to obtain the job verses that of a city council member.
But, here is another point: What difference was there amongst the candidates? Did any of the four candidates - Annise Parker, Peter Brown, Gene Locke, or Roy Morales propose any radical changes in city governance? Did any of them propose to sell off Houston's two main airports? Did any of the mayoral candidates propose going to Austin and asking for legislation empowering Houston to collect 20 cents of gasoline taxes to solve Houston's transportation woes? No. Did any of them propose doing away with property taxes and implementing sales taxes? No. Did any candidate propose scrapping rail and rethinking Metro Rail? The closest thing to that was Roy Morales stating that Metro was a bully and that we should examine elevated rail for safety reasons. Peter Brown was specifically going to implement greater land use controls if elected, but otherwise there was not that great of difference between the candidates.
So, if there was not that great of difference between the candidates, what else was at stake for the public in competing for a job that one person once described at the Houston Chronicle website as being a glorified dog catcher? If you had to call the fire department because your home or your neighbor's residence had caught on fire, and they showed up, would it have mattered whether Annise Parker, Peter Brown, Bob Lanier, or Roy Morales were the ones sitting in the Mayor's chair when that happened? What about your City Council member? Probably not. So ask yourself - what difference does it make to you who sits in the Mayor's chair or on council, and hence why bother to vote?
In the 2009 Texas primaries, what was at stake? Both main parties (and there are two main parties, because we have single member districts, right?) chose their candidates for the Texas legislature and Governor, but not who was going to be the Governor! And what if you are an independent voter who does not subscribe to either party? Why should you have voted?
Another issue at stake is asking how much does you vote really matter? In the 2008 Presidential and congressional elections, 60 percent of eligible Americans, over 120 million in all, voted in the Presidential election. How much of a probability is your vote going to be the one that mattered? Ask yourself the same thing in any election - in the 2006 Texas primaries, there were over 600,000 voters who voted, a far smaller number. But you still needed to ask yourself what was the probability that your vote was the one that mattered? It was non-existent.
So, do you want people to vote? It is possible to force people to vote, indeed compulsory voting is the law in a number of countries. Such laws are usually enforced by small fines, or threat of disenfranchisement if someone habitually fails to vote. But one needs to ask whether such notions are compatible with liberty and freedom. Do you want to live in a country where it is compulsory to participate in politics? Better yet, how much knowledge do people really possess about political issues? Yet compulsory voting would be compelling them to participate in the political arena.
Admittedly, this entry is a mess, but America's political system was designed to make things bland and unexciting, thereby discouraging participation in politics. Yes change could come, but it would come slowly and in increments, not through sudden explosions or radical change. Elections and voting do matter in America, but they usually don't matter as much as people think, because of systemic barriers to more political parties, of fractured government power, and barriers put in the way of the expansion of the state. By doing this, our Founders wanted people to dedicate their energies into commercialism, to solving problems through private means or by charity, and not by force of the state, and for them that was the way in which liberty and freedom would be preserved. Did it work? Well, for 140 years it generally did, but WWII changed everything.
Barring a meltdown and a revolution, which is a distinct possibility, it will take another 70 years to roll things back and even then there are plenty of interest groups and people favoring bigger government that will stand in the way of liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility. And so it goes that the great American experiment roll onwards.
Wizard
I'm going to be up late tonight. After reading some work related stuff, I'm writing a response to Harris County Metro's FEIS for the University rail line. This is the fourth public reply comment I've made on Metro's rail lines. In previous public comments, I've submitted photos to Metro, the FTA, and to members of Congress, that show all the "for lease" signs and boarded up property along Main Street that contradict economic development claims, I've shown empty streets near Crosstimbers and ridden Metro buses to dispute their travel savings time claims, I've predicted cost escalations, have shown evidence that Metro's rosy future cash analysis predictions are garbage (why would Metro Chairman David Wolff otherwise be writing editorials in the Houston Chronicle demanding that Metro's sales tax territorial jurisdiction be expanded?), and have asked whether all we are doing is simply turning bus riders into rail riders, just to name a few things. But every time, Metro gets their FEIS approved, as they simply brush aside any public criticisms with simple one line replies, as they waltz their merry way towards bagging federal grants.
Why bother? The NEPA / EIS process, like nearly everything else the federal government does, is full of nothing but bullshit.
Wizard
About two weeks days ago, the Wizard wrote about the death of an aunt of mine on my mother's side. This is the story of observations I made on the trip I made to Chicago and back.
The trip to Chicago
My father and I left Houston in his rather spacious automobile circa 1-2pm in the afternoon. We went over to my brother's residence where my father left him some instructions and house keys before we hit the open road. We ran into traffic congestion no fewer than five times within the first 35 miles before finally hitting some open road along I-45. We avoided the I-610 loop construction, but it was raining pretty hard that day and there were a number of accidents which were eliciting lots of rubber necking from drivers.
I had wanted to get out of Houston using U.S. 59, but I got into an argument with my father, who wanted to use I-10 to avoid the reconstruction work going on at the 610 Loop and get onto Interstate 45. We were leaving about 1pm and I told him that if we used I-45, we would run into evening rush hour traffic in Dallas. He would have none of it, so off we went, toughing it out up I-45.
The road way finally opened up somewhere around Conroe and off we went. True to form, we reached Dallas around 5pm and promptly ran into Dallas evening rush hour traffic around the point where I-45 ends and the road continues, turning into State highway 75. As with Houston, there are only either three or four lanes that go through downtown Dallas. It took a good one hour and twenty minutes to make it through Dallas and its northern suburbs before the traffic lightened up again. I was amazed how far the region had suburbanized. I spotted a new interchange that was being constructed in the outskirts of the Dallas Metro along highway 75. It will be needed.
As it was, I drove along highway 69 through Oklahoma, eventually hitting Interstate 44 east of Tulsa, which led to St. Louis. While driving along I-44, I saw a night train rolling in the opposite direction along the Interstate, reminding me that many of our roads followed where the trains ran.
We went through St. Louis around 4:00 am. I found the road network around St. Louis to be rather tricky. The interstates around St. Louis are full of turns, and the roads undulate with the terrain. If you aren't careful, then it's very easy to miss the turn offs that you're supposed to hit in order to stay on course.
I eventually made it to Lincoln Illinois by 7:30am. I let my father drive the rest of the way into Chicago. He is up there in age. I had let him drive for about 1 hour during the night, but he kept veering off onto the shoulder of the road, waking me up in the process from a brief nap. I then took back over driving until daylight, when it was safer for him to drive. We got into Chicago after 19 hours on the road.
Chicago
Many people have extolled about Chicago having an extensive mass transit system, and it does. Nonetheless, there was no doubt in my mind as my father and I entered Chicago on that snowy morning in late December that Chicago is in fact a city that is primarily built around the automobile.
We came into town and my father briefly drove around the convention center area. I saw quite a few hotels either directly connected to the convention center, or within a few blocks walking distance. The center also happened to be empty as we drove by. It reminded me that there are only so many conventions to go around and that Houston should not be wasting its energies on the convention business. We have far more pressing business to attend to than worrying about fighting over the scraps with a hundred other cities for convention business.
There was snow on the ground the entire time I was in Chicago. The temperatures hovered in the 20's during the day, and dipped into the teens at night. It was okay for a day or two, but after that I started to realize how thankful I was that I did not grow up, nor spend my adult life in Chicago.
I have a niece who is going to university in Chicago. She, like many students, has a car, but often walks with her friends to nearby restaurants and clubs. She also takes public transportation.
On the other hand, we stayed with my God parents while in the city. They never take public transportation, going everywhere by car - and yes, they have a pair of very nice cars! My sister had rented an SUV for the situation, so we mostly went back and forth between my aunt's residence and my God parents' using both vehicles. Only my mother flew into Chicago. We needed cars because it turned out that my aunt had quite a bit of stuff she had accumulated in her apartment. I ended up throwing away some 100 bags of trash in neighborhood bins before I returned to Houston and we took quite a few trips to the Salvation Army to donate items to charity.
Many of Chicago's older neighborhoods have alleyways in the back, where there are parking garages for residents. The alleyways are also where the trash bins, which are city owned, are located. Another item of interest was that in both my aunt's neighborhood and in my God parent's neighborhood, the streets were configured to be one way streets, with parallel on street parking. And yes, parking was often very hard to come by. On more than one occasion, I ended up parking over one block away from where my God parents lived. My father recalled that when the family still lived in Chicago in the 1960's, the streets in those neighborhoods were two way and there were not nearly as many vehicles parked in the street.
My God parents picked up the Chicago Tribune on the Sunday while we were there. While reading the weather pages, I was reminded of a piece of family lore. My father had a lifelong friend who shot a home movie of the blizzards of 1977-1979. For those of you who are not aware, Chicago endured three consecutive winters, 1976-77, 1977-78, and 1978-79, where the city was buried by an avalanche of snow. I recall seeing the home video, mercifully during a Houston summer, as a teenager, but had forgotten about it until I read that story. Another piece of trivia: The chief meterologist for WGN is a fellow named Thomas Skilling. He happens to be the brother of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling.
But I digress. In 1957, the City of Chicago passed a zoning ordinance that mandated that developers provide one space for off street parking for each residential unit. It became clear to me that this mandate was not providing enough parking for Chicago residents.
We drove up and down Western Avenue many times, as that was the thoroughfare that stretched between my God parents and my aunt's residence. The street has three lanes in both directions, but the outermost lanes are taken up for parallel parking. I also noticed that there were row houses along the street in a few spots, indicating possible spot zoning since the street was obviously commercial. There were some businesses had Houston style parking, such as some CVS / Walgreen's type drug stores and some restaurants we went to. In other words, the zoning codes were clearly not uniform.
There were times where we would see clumps of pedestrians walking in the early evening hours. My father told me that it was likely that those were people who were just getting off work and heading to some neighborhood tavern or nightclub. At one point we passed under an "EL" (elevated rail line). My dad began to reminesce about his life in Chicago before we moved to Houston. He said he would often move to where there was a nearby rail station, as he did not own a car while living in Chicago until he was 36 years old. At one point I asked him how long it took for him to get to work when he lived in Chicago, and he told me about 45 minutes to an hour.
Another item of note was that gasoline prices are some 50-70 cents per gallon higher in Chicago than they are down south. This price discrepancy still held in central Illinois when we bought gas on the way home. I am not sure about why this was the case, but I would not be surprised if the matter has to do with the idea that oil and gas companies have to formulate different type of fuel due to Clean Air Act mandates. This balkanizes the gasoline markets around the country.
The trip home
My mother decided that my dad needed to go home, as he wasn't adapting well to the weather or to the problems of dealing with my aunt's death. Ergo the job fell to me to drive him back to Houston.
My dad directed me to take I-90 / I-94 towards downtown Chicago, then take I-55 south to get out of the city. I'll never forget the view of the skyline of downtown Chicago from a crowded and congested I-90 / I-94. It is not as spectacular as Manhattan's skyline, but it is very impressive. It is that broad downtown area that (at least on paper) justifies Chicago's public transportation network.
As we made it onto I-55, I encountered another amazing sight. It took driving some 30 miles south along I-55 before the traffic finally began to thin out, but that wasn't what startled me. It was that I must have seen 300-400 18 wheelers driving northbound along I-55. At some points, it looked to be that one out of every three or four vehicles was an 18 wheeler. There was a repair facility for 18 wheelers along the road, as well as several parking areas. I caught what I thought was a glimpse of a freight rail line along the way. It reminded me of how Chicago, like Los Angeles, is a vast hub for the movement of freight.
We followed I-55 through as it turned into I-40, down through to Memphis, then turned west through Arkansas on the way back. We made it to the outskirts of Memphis after 9pm, and as we did, I saw hordes of Federal Express freight trucks making their way west bound out of Memphis and into the night.
I reached Texarkana around 1:00am. TX-DOT is constructing a large interchange at the edge of town, and it took several minutes to snake our way through the construction before we hit U.S. 59 for the final drive home. I wanted to make it back into town before the morning rush hour hit with full force. That turned out to be a tough thing to do because U.S. 59, though it is five lanes in many areas, is not an Interstate road. Because of that, the road goes directly through the heart of many towns in East Texas, such as Lufkin, Marshall, and Jefferson. Every time you go through those towns, you have to slow down to urban speeds, whereas the Interstates often bypass or circumnavigate many smaller urban areas which often allows for faster travel.
We made it into Houston at 7:00am, running into rain and mildly heavy traffic along 59 as we reached 610 Loop. I turned at 610 to head towards I-10, and ran directly into the construction work that TX-DOT is doing along the route. I was glad when it was over, as it was another 19 hour drive home.
Final Thoughts
1) I did not run into much traffic congestion driving either to Chicago or back outside the major urban areas. Even St. Louis, which I drove through at rush hour, did not have too much traffic congestion. The big traffic congestion, surprise, surprise, was in Chicago, Dallas, and here in Houston. As such, I strongly believe that the Trans Texas Corridor was (and is) not necessary! The Governor and the political classes can make all the statements they want about traffic congestion, but I didn't see it along I-45, nor along anywhere else.
If Texas really needs new roadway, it would be much cheaper to simply add a lane in either direction along the right of way along I-35 or any of our other major roads. That would be much cheaper on the public coffers than cutting a quarter mile wide swath along the entire state of Texas and building a gigantic infrastructure project costing $150 billion. When doing infrastructure, it's better to make improvements to add to what's already there, if it's necessary, rather than start up gigantic new projects that often lead to disasters.
2) What is necessary is that if government is still going to be the main player in terms of infrastructure funding, then policies ideally need to be developed so that the bulk of the money goes to where the traffic congestion is at - which is the major urban areas. America already has a great road network for its towns and rural areas. What we need to do for them is simply maintain what they have.
In 2010, Congress will probably take up a new six year transportation appropriations bill. The House chair for transportation is Ken Oberstar, who has stated that he wants a massive six year appropriation bill of $500 billion, well over 50 percent higher than the cost of the previous Bush Administration era transportation bill.
Tea Party types should be thinking that considering our country's financial straits, this is utterly irresponsible. The Interstate freeway system, which was the main rationale for collecting the federal gas tax, is completed and there's no stomach in Congress to raise the gas tax. Congress has been funding transportation out of general revenues since the last bill ran out of authorization. Governor Perry might have been ambitious with the Trans Texas Corridor, but his criticism of federal transportation was cogent when he stated that the federal program had become unfocused, because so many gas tax dollars were not getting back to where they came from and they were being spent on items like bicycle trails and light rail systems.
I would argue that the federal government should reduce the gas tax to perhaps 5 cents per gallon. The federal program should go only towards the Interstate system, thereby putting the federal program into maintenance mode, and either let the state and local governments set up policies to fund their own transportation networks, or better yet let the private sector start dealing with the matter. Either way, it's more likely that America would end up with a more rational transportation network for the future and it would be part of a program to start rolling back the centralized power of Washington has drawn the ire of so many.
Wizard
Greetings gentle readers,
The Wizard has several items he wants to write about, but rather than belt out a long epistle at the moment, I thought I would simply drop a quick note on an announcement. The Houston Chronicle's Carolyn Feibel reported that unless a Member of Congress objected, the FTA would approve advancing Harris County Metro's so called University Line into preliminary engineering (PE) status. No FEIS has been issued by Metro on the rail line. A discussion about the issue can be read here on BlogHouston.
Well, today the Wizard received notice of a Letter from John Culberson - who happens to be my Congressman - that the Congressman intends to object to this advance of the rail line, or the western portion of it which is in the 7th Congressional district, into PE status. Culberson's 14 page letter, along with documentation supporting Culberson's grounds for objecting based on Metro's stated financial health, and pertinent news stories from KHOU-TV concerning statements from Gene Locke and Annise Parker regarding Metro's 25 percent general mobility funding, can be downloaded here.
As to what this means to the status of the rail alignment, I am not yet sure. The Wizard thinks this will cause the FTA to scrutinize Metro's ability to meet the local matching requirements, but probably will not stop the project from advancing into PE status. As always, what will really stop Metro is the massive cost escalations of Metro Rail, along with its ongoing general mobility obligations.
Houston will know who its next Mayor will be next week. Otherwise, the world rolls onwards.
Wizard.
The Wizard has a rash of blog entries that I want to write, so I've been spending quite a bit of time at the keyboard.
The first of my writings concerns a rather obscure issue that should matter to all citizens of Harris County. As of late, there has been inquiry made as to whether Harris County should have a Public Defender's office, for purposes - at least on paper - of insuring that the poor and indigent have constitutionally guaranteed legal counsel available to them in the event that they are charged with a criminal offense.
The current regime of criminal defense for the poor in Harris County, which can be read in this excellent paper published by the Houston area League of Women Voters, is for a judge who is presiding over a criminal case to assign an attorney to handle the case. However, as the LWV paper states, there are two other primary methods by which legal representation can be provided for; one is via the Contract method, by which the government contracts out with a non-profit group or a law firm to provide legal counsel for the poor. What usually happens is that the firm gets a fixed sum regardless of how many cases are dealt with. The other means by which indigent defense can be dealt with is via a Public Defender's office. One of the things I learned was the nearly all other large municipalities and counties around the United States - for better or worse - employ a public defender's office. The LWV pamphlet states that as long as 30 years ago, 90 of the 100 largest counties in the U.S. had a public defenders office.
As for the meeting at the Democratic Party headquarters, it was an interesting affair. Much like the quarterly Republican Party precinct chair meetings, the D's have free food at their "brown bag" events. The bonus for the Wizard is that the Dems were holding their brown bag issue townhalls during the day, but now they're holding them in the evening.
Presiding over the evening's talk was HCDP chairman Gary Birnberg. The evening's guest speakers were State Senator Rodney Ellis and HC District Attorney (and former Houston City Council member) Vince Ryan. There were about 100 people attending the meeting, indeed it was standing room only for the crowd. There was definitely a sentiment that Bill White "would be our best candidate for Governor." One person mentioned that "it changes all of the state races."
Mr. Birnberg said that some 100 candidates had filed for Judge. Pleas were made for precinct chairs by Mr. Birnberg, who stated that it was through the PC's that you won races. Sheila Jackson Lee showed up at the meeting, and did speak, but much to my amazement, she didn't try to take up all the time at the podium.
The first featured speaker was Rodney Ellis. Senator Ellis stated that Harris County does have a Public Defender office, but that it is a federal office, not a county office. Ellis stated that "most people around the country look at Texas and think we're lost our minds." Ellis went on to say that yes, "criminal justice is a government program, and because it's a government program, there are going to be screw ups." Ellis stated that we in Texas send more to the death chamber and to prison than anywhere else. He argued that a public defender system is fairer to the accused than any other regime of indigent defense. He said, "if you're poor, you'd want a federal public defender."
Ellis also pointed out that if you have a judge making appointments of counsel to the defendant, there are conflicts of interest. So, gentle readers, where are the conflicts of interest in a judge appointed counsel system for the indigent? Two main ones: One is that the judge, in theory, has the power to hand out appointments to lawyers, like those who contribute money to that judge's political campaigns. Another possible conflict is if the lawyer is not doing too well financially and decides that he needs some cases to work on.
In a broader sense, what is it that judges campaign on when they are candidates for the post? Do they promise that they will be fair? No, they promise to voters that they will run their courts efficiently and keep their dockets clear. The issue (or danger) that arises with a court appointed attorney for the indigent is that since the object is to keep the dockets clear, if you have a court appointed attorney representing an indigent defendant, the possibility arises that if a defense attorney is hungry for cases and wants to stay on the good side of the judge (or judges) who appointed him or her to defend the client, then the court appointed defense attorney could conceivably sell the defendant short through encouraging guilty pleas, plea bargaining, or doing things that serve the interest of the judge and the attorney, rather than that of the defendant. In the words of one retired defense attorney who was present, "we're supposed to have an adversarial judicial system!", the implication being that with a court appointed lawyer system that we really don't. Instead, we have a conflict of interest.
Someone whose name I didn't get argued that the only reason why the State of Texas hasn't been sued over the issue of court appointed attorneys for the accused is that everyone points the finger at everyone else, ergo where does the fault lie within the system? Again, this issue is not a vote getter when it comes to campaign time.
Senator Ellis went on to way that corruption is something to consider, but noted that judges make nearly $100,000 per year. Ellis, who authored the Texas Fair Defense Act in 2001 (and more here), stated that a public defender office would be scalable, but noted that whether a PD office would be better than a court appointed attorney system depended on whether it was set up right and was given enough funding.
Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan then took to the podium. He largely agreed with Senator Ellis, stating that Harris County has perhaps the harshest criminal justice system anywhere to be found in America. Ryan noted that the GOP leadership is dead set against a PD system for indigent defenders, and stated that Gary Polland gets paid $250,000 per year by Republican judges.
Sheila Jackson Lee took to the podium - we couldn't have a public meeting where Sheila didn't get to talk, could we? Sheila said that "there was power in justice", and that the Obama Administration is investigating the Harris County Sheriffs department for why there were 110 deaths in prison over the past 10 years. Also being investigated are a lack of medical care of prisoners and Ms. Jackson Lee said that there needs to be a substantial mental health component in the jail system. Sheila also decried what she called "the proliferation of guns in the community."
Mr. Ryan resumed command of the podium. He stated that it costs some $50 per day to have someone in jail. A study that was commissioned for the Harris County commissioners recommended that to relieve overcrowding, there should be a Public Defender's office, it recommended that three days of time be given for every day in jail, rather than two as it is now in Harris County, that there be personal recognizance bonds allowed, and that pre-trial release be given for low risk offenders.
Another topic that was raised was bail reform in Harris County. Mr. Ryan said that twelve bondsmen get 47 percent of the bail bonds in the County. A point was raised that there should be a series of questions asked of a defendant before a defendant is allowed to obtain a pre-trial bond.
Senator Ellis resumed speaking. He argued that implementing a PD office would institutionalize knowledge on indigent defense. He believed that yes, most defendants are in jail because they are guilty, but some are in there because of their lawyers pleading them out. Ellis stated that a PD would be an appointed office, not elected. Ellis said that sixty percent of defendants are in jail because they weren't processed properly and that the average number of cases for a juvenile PD is 1,200 per year, compared to a recommended level of 150 per year. He stated this to reiterate his point that to have a functioning PD office, you need to adequately fund it. Currently the County staffs the Attorney's office with 100 lawyers with a budget of $16 million. About $30 million per year is now spent in indigent defense.
Further discussing the funding and conflict issues, Ellis asked, "when was the last time a lawyer asked to reduce a bond?" The answer was never, because they make money when a defendant stays in jail. Senator Ellis stated that 50 percent of the jail population is black and poor. He went on to say that this is obviously a political issue for him because his voting base was being eroded.
Long time defense attorney David Mitcham was present. Mitcham handed out a November 9th, 2008 New York Times story stating that public defender offices in seven states are refusing to take on cases citing heavy workloads. Mitcham argued that the problem was political, stating that the current judiciary overturned the pre-trial release regime, but Senator Ellis stated that the court appointed attorney regime was put in place by Democrats. Ellis told the audience that Dick Raycraft was all for a PD office, and that some Republicans also recognized that lawyers felt an allegiance to a judge in order to get more cases.
It remains to be seen whether the Democratic Party will adopt, as a resolution, the formation of a PD office next year, but it is on the table. The Republicans are strongly against it, witness this article by Court Koenning in the Texas Conservative Review.
So, is this political, or is this good justice? Should we have a hybrid PD office and court appointment system? The Wizard has yet to make up his mind. By the way - as a word of warning to the Republican Party. The Wizard heard a lot of talk about how Harris County was now 62 percent black and brown, and that there would be a Democrat County Judge soon. Clearly the local Democratic Party is taking it for granted that Hispanics and Blacks will vote for them in the future.
Well gentle readers, this was a long scribe. If you want to read up more on this issue here are some helpful links:
1) Here is the Texas Fair Defense Project's report on a Harris County Public Defender's office, where it is argued that a PD office will result in increased public accountability and will control costs.
2) Two stories back from 1999 from the Houston Press tell a story that the rights of defendants get compromised via the court appointed attorney system in order to keep the dockets cleared, and having defendants plea guilty to get out of prison.
3) An excellent blog entry from the always readable Murray Newman where he states that the real problem with our court system is that there are heavy caseloads and that defendants will be - in a memorable phrase - cooling their heels for a while, because of heavy caseloads. Newman also joins David Mitcham in countering the Houston Chronicle (and Senator Ellis), arguing against the establishment of a PD office.
Addendum edit: November 26th, 2009
When I initially published this blog entry, I identified the owner of the Washington Wave jitney service as Erik Ibarra. That information is incorrect and is hereby retracted. The actual founder and President of the Washington Wave jitney service is Lauren Barrash. The Washington Wave jitney service is in no way owned, operated by, or affiliated with Mr. Ibarra or his Eco Shuttle service. The Wizard formally apologizes to Ms. Barrash and to Mr. Ibarra for any confusion that may have resulted from my error.
(What follows is the resuming of my original blog entry)
Apologize for not blogging for several weeks, but I've been busy mostly on the social front.
The Washington Wave site notes that this service is the first jitney service offered in Houston in 15 years. Why is that? Much of that has to do with the barriers to entry caused by the the restrictiveness of the jitney ordinance (Chapter 46, article 6 of the City of Houston ordinances), which state that a would be jitney operator cannot operate a vehicle that is older than five years old, on top of a pile of other fees that have to be paid and rules that have to be followed. It's not hard for people to imagine that such barriers to entry make it very hard for anyone to break even on operating a jitney service, much less turn a buck.
Moving onwards, the weekend that Randal was in town, my 20 year old Honda CRX with 192,000 miles started having problems with the clutch. A consulting with my mechanic that I've been with for the past 12 years confirmed that pretty much the entire clutch, clutch cable, and probably the transmissions seals were all shot.Getting the car repaired was a cool $900, but I now have a car that can probably last another 100,000 miles if I so desire, and I've been finding I'm getting about four miles per gallon better gas mileage since the transmission work was done.
I was able to make it to and from my car mechanic's shop via Metro bus. Metro has the #81, the #82, and the #53 all at my disposal. No $130 million per mile rail lines, along with the disrupted businesses, nor the 1,500 foot radius condemnation zones needed, but here was the kicker. It was Friday afternoon and a Metro bus was stalled, dead in its tracks at the corner of South Shepherd and Westheimer. The bus driver had put out a set of blocks to indicate an out of service bus. I asked her what was the problem with the bus and she said there was a battery problem. The lost lane of traffic, not to mention the fact that her bus had broken down at the corner of a very busy major intersection, was a recipe for a major traffic tie up. Vehicles were backed up at least 50 deep back along Westheimer.
Fortunately (for me at least), there was another #81 bus just a block and a half up the road, so I waited until the next bus showed up and went home. However, the trips back and forth took 40 minutes for a five mile trip, which meant that the bus traveled an average speed of 7.5 miles per hour. On both the trip home and back the next day, fellow passengers looked at me and complained about how slow the bus was. Granted, these routes were navigating Westheimer during busy afternoons, but those passengers were looking at me as though they were hoping I could do something about the situation.
This got me to thinking about the idea of elevated transit. Last week at the HPRA meeting, Barry had an engineer from Tubular rail speak (or perhaps tout is the better word) on his product, but he didn't get away without having to answer a bunch of questions on the safety of his concept.
This has gotten me to thinking that there seems to be this idea out there that if a social decision is made to elevate transportation, it must be in the form of rail transit. But what about the idea of simply building an elevated road via double decking a thoroughfare, and allowing only buses, bicycles, and pedestrians to access it? Granted there are issues (there always are), including the cost of building anything that is grade separated, which would probably double the cost of a road built at grade.
A double decking of a thoroughfare would have to be at least 4 lanes wide, 2 wide lanes for buses, a middle lane for maneuvering, perhaps a four foot wide buffering strip for planting of vegetation, flowers, or scenery, and outside lanes for pedestrians and cyclists. There could be overhead cover provided for cyclists and pedestrians to allow for shelter against rain. Bus stops could be placed at gaps between the buffers every one-third of a mile.
A host of issues that would arise include resistance from neighborhoods (i.e. would such a project be politically feasible), constructing stairs or elevators for egress, where to put support structures for elevating a road, building the road high enough for vehicles to pass underneath, worries that such a structure would be a visual eyesore, and possibly water drainage. Costs per mile for 60 feet of elevated roadway would probably run at somewhere around $10 - 20 million per lane mile or $40 - 80 million per mile. If there were to be an elevated busway built over a freeway, then additional costs would incur from having to cross over the freeway. Here is a webpage that shows what an elevated busway might look like.
On the positive side, there would be no need for acquisition of additional right of way, but rather simple easements. There would also be no electric stray current leakage to worry about which is a substantial contributor to maintenance costs of rail lines, and some construction costs would be saved via not having to provide electrical power stations or infrastructure. Traffic congestion would ease on the streets below and motorists would not have to worry about unsafe at-grade trains going through our busiest intersections every 3-6 minutes. It's also conceivable that some property owners would build extensions to an elevated bus way from their own buildings.
If an elevated, exclusive busway were to be built over Westheimer, that would conceivably cut the travel time that I experienced a few weeks ago in half. Placing a bus stop every one third of a mile would have meant 15 bus stops to sit through on the way to Shepherd, which at twenty seconds a stop would mean a stop time of five minutes. Given that there would be segregated traffic with no stops at intersections or traffic lights to worry about, the bus could probably average 30 miles per hour between stops. That would result in an overall five mile trip of 15 minutes, or an average speed of 20 miles per hour. That would cut the overall travel time on that bus trip by more than half, and faster trips mean more transit riders. I could conceivably make a work trip to downtown within 30 minutes from where I live, and if I could do that, then I would consider regularly taking a bus to work.
A separated guideway along the elevated busway for cyclists and pedestrians would allow for getting around town without having to tear up the existing infrastructure and current business owners just might be able to survive the construction.
It's admittedly implausible that elevated busway will make it into the public discourse, but what such an idea goes to show is that in order to make public transportation (or via other methods) attractive to anyone is that transit has to be able to compete with automobiles in terms of speed, convenience, and overall safety. That means for the smart growth crowd to get what it wants, then the entire City of Houston would have to be completely redone and that's not going to be cheap. I would imagine it would be cheaper to do that via elevating the roadway, but that all depends on what you're after - improving mobility, or reshaping people's behavior.
Wizard
The Wizard recently has been in a rather expansive mood, exploring other aspects and possibilities that life has to offer. About two and a half years ago, a friend of mine made an offer to me to buy in on a wine bar located on Washington Avenue. He was up front and fair with me, offering me a detailed prospectus from the business owners, as well as what to expect from him. I mulled over the offer for about two weeks before turning it down. I had some confidence that the bar would make it. What stopped me was the thought that I simply did not know how much time and effort overseeing my investment would take out of me. My employer frowns on moonlighting and I dreaded the thought of having to get up at 7am in the morning and coming home after midnight five nights out of the week.
And so it was. Yet, it is a good thing to look over offers with an open mind. I ran into this same fellow about two weeks ago, and sure enough we started going over the idea of me buying into something along Washington Avenue. The street is brimming now, of course, with new development, the area being ripe for redevelopment.
So this past Saturday, the Wizard found himself taking a tour of Washington Avenue. There was a carnival atmosphere at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, as well as plenty of people enjoying themselves at various bars and clubs. It was a beautiful day out.
My landlord friend showed me his properties, and described the overall situation he was in. I had to admit it was a bit of gordian knot. To wit, the wine bar which I would have invested in ran into a bit of trouble with an ornery City inspector and had their outside porch ripped out. There went some of their business and the bar had to let go of several employees, and that wasn't the last of what I heard from my landlord friend, or his associates I met with that day, with regards to complaints about being a businessman dealing with the City.
But we moved onwards. We went to another of my landlord friend's properties, another of which is host to a bar. Now here is where I was really leading to with this blog entry. The bar has parking, but there is a lot along the street behind Washington Avenue that recently came up for sale. The lot is undeveloped and needs only to be cleared by its future owner. Now here's the kicker. The lot will probably go around $350,000. Adding the lot would be a bit asset to my landlord friend's property, but he's a bit tied up financially. Hence the possibility of my involvement.
But here's the catch. Ideally, we would be using the property for about 25 parking spaces, and one guy came up with the idea of putting some sand on the lot and allowing bar patrons to play some off street volleyball (this was their idea, not mine!). Now the Wizard has a degree in Economics and you can imagine what is going through my mind. How am I going recoup or otherwise justify investing over a third of a million dollars on a lot that is to be used for 25 parking spaces? That works out to some $14,000 per parking space. I'm not sure a commercial lender will look at me and say that - yes - I can carry another note like that in my current financial condition. Can I amortize something like that over 30 or more years?
Several ideas went through my mind. My landlord friend and I could charge for parking space. My partner has made it clear (as has the City) that parking - not sidewalks or walkability - is the biggest problem along Washington Avenue. Maybe parking is indeed the highest and best use for this lot and that I could generate sufficient monthly fees to justify utilizing that lot as a parking lot. Maybe it would enhance the value of my friend's property and business, thereby we could figure out a way to capture that value and get it back to me.
But ultimately, all of that is not what I'm getting at here. What I am getting at is is that it's an article of faith amongst those who are angry about automobiles or suburbanization that automobile use is subsidized and that automobile use does not pay for itself. I've often wondered how many of those gripers have actually run a business, have been faced with a real world decision on how much parking to provide potential customers, or tried figuring out how to best use a plot of land in a spot market that is both in a recession, yet is dynamic and rapidly changing.
Tom DeGregory was right. In a competitive market economy, the competition in capital markets, in the form of land, labor, and investment, is much more fierce than it is for product markets. It's not an easy thing to figure out, and as George P. Bush said the other night at an event I attended, there are no guarantees in a free market economy. Others will no doubt covet that lot of land, but such a decision on the use of that land certainly isn't something that I would trust to some starry eyed urban planner, or some moron employed in a City bureaucracy, even if the neighbors get noisy and start complaining.
Yes, I know what the answers are going to be. The planners are going to gripe about how City codes dictate how much parking there is supposed to be. They're going to gripe about strip centers and shopping malls full of acres of concrete. They're going to gripe about off street parking, a lack of sidewalks, and all the rest of it. But it still doesn't erase the dilemma I find myself in - whether to pull the trigger and buy?
Multiply this conundrum hundreds of thousands of times over and maybe, just maybe, you can begin to understand why I'm not all that thrilled with zoning or other far distant planning.
The world rolls onwards...
Wizard
Over at BlogHouston, Kevin posits that would be light rail contractors really like Houston mayoral candidate Gene Locke. The BH posting builds on the writing of Houston Chronicle reporters Brad Olsen and Carrie Feibel, who write that Mr. Locke's ties to the Metropolitan Transit Authority are paying off in the form of $46,000 in campaign contributions that were obtained by Mr. Locke's mayoral campaign.
Hmmm.
The Wizard is not surprised at this and neither should his gentle readers. Metro's 30 miles of light rail will most likely end up costing somewhere around four billion dollars!. What is amazing is not that Mr. Locke was able to garner campaign funds from establishment for this campaign, it's that Mr. Locke was only able to obtain $46,000 from would be light rail contractors! He should have been able to obtain many times that amount considering that billions in contracts are at stake here.
Paul Magaziner, a Richmond Avenue businessman who has become a fiery critic of rail transit, emailed an Adobe file to members of the media that showed that Metro has spent about $1.38 million on legal counsel from three politically connected law firms to defend itself in court from a lawsuit filed by a Richmond Avenue businesswoman. Why does it take three law firms for Metro to defend itself in court? Did it only cost a few thousand, or perhaps $10-20 grand to generate $1.38 million in legal billings? If so, then what a payoff!
This reminds me of an ongoing theme of the Wizard's, namely that I do not care much for campaign finance limits. The reason I don't care for them is that campaign finance limits are almost always pushed by big government advocates who are fearful that, once they've pushed through the big government they desire, they suddenly wake up to the fact that creating big government also creates the conditions for fighting over control of all that big government. In other words, how much of your time and money is it worth to you (and your friends) to be able to get what you want?
Are you one of Houston's 5,000 police officers and want a $5,000 - $10,000 per year pay raise? Then why is the Houston Police Officer's Union (HPOU) PAC only allowed to give up to $10,000 for the mayoral election? After all, we're talking about a public issue (how much police officers are paid) that would cost taxpayers $25 - $50 million per year. So, why isn't HPOU allowed to give - say - $500,000 to the campaigns of mayoral hopefuls? After all, such a figure would only cost each police officer $100 apiece and the pay off to each police officer could be 50 - 100 times that much.
Similar logic could be applied to nearly any interest group in politics, whether it be teacher's unions, fire fighter's unions, Houston Intercontinental airport operations, municipal employees, all of whom have huge financial stakes in the form of underfunded pensions and general funding for their operations. It gets even worse at the state and federal level. Some people might wail that the 2008 presidential election cost over $1 billion, but you have to remember that the federal government now has a budget of over $3 trillion! Spending $1 billion to control Congress and the Presidency is quite a bargain when you can control three trillion dollars per year of spending, as well as the armed forces, tax collecting agencies, and the regulatory powers of the federal government.
In addition to revealing how much it's worth to control government, or to have a dominant voice in government, lifting campaign contribution limits would also allow small groups of people to pool together a substantial amount of money in order to make a candidate viable. It could also help cut down on time spent raising money.
Another issue is that it always seems that interest groups seem to have a much easier time coming up with money. The Tea Party movement has to resort to selling T-Shirts at events to raise money, while insider interest groups seem to effortlessly generate money for their causes.
The whole point being made here is that for all the griping about corruption from campaign contributions, there is an argument to be made that there would not be such a need to pony up that much money for political campaigns if there wasn't so much being fought over. Bear that in mind the next time you read a story about campaign finance.
Wizard.
I caught this post via the Houston Chronicle from Keep Houston Houston entitled A funny thing about transit. It was a most interesting post coming from Keep Houston Houston.
The Wizard has noted before that I can in fact reach my downtown job from where I live via Metro bus. It's just that it would add 1 hour of time to my round trip commute to do so and I've decided that it's not worth my time to put up with a 1 hour and 45 minute round trip work commute every day.
I subscribe to the Journal of Urban Economics, ergo I know there have been plenty of studies that have been done to estimate what the value of people's time is on transit trips. The learned literature strongly suggests that the in time spent in transit is valued at some 40-50 percent of their per hour wage rates, while time spent in accessing and waiting for transit vehicles is perceived at a considerably higher rate.
Another part of the transportation mobility equation for me is that I have social interests that would be a bit hard to satisfy via transit, but not by my car. My social interests are almost all located between my work place and my home, ergo I don't have to drive much in order to live what for me is a reasonably satisfying life. Now if I were to get married that would be another story.
So, KHH has much of it right, but not all of it. Transit does limit your mobility to the extent that you only get to go where Metro goes, so it alters your lifestyle in that extra dimension. It sucks up your time and it is not 24x7. Transit also limits at least some of your shopping opportunities vis-a-vis a car because it's very difficult to haul that 52 inch plasma screen TV onto a Metro Bus or rail car. Allowing jitney competition would aid in transit mobility, but it's still impossible to understand why 30 miles of rail lines have to be built when Metro already has a bus network that runs into the thousands of miles, and where we could achieve close to the same thing rail would offer via adding dedicated bus lanes to major thoroughfares which would remove much of the speed and reliability problem that transit vehicles have to contend with.
Always remember, it's added mobility, not mobility substitution that we're after. As for why the votes for Metro Solutions came from the inner city and not the suburbs, maybe that has more to do with the idea that folks in the inner city might be able to reach the Medical Center via a $1.5 billion train that would run from the Hillcroft transit center, but a suburbanite will not be able to take a train that runs from Katy to Kingwood.
Wizard
Before I go any further, I wish my older brother a belated Happy 50th birthday. I should be thankful that he made it this far.
For the past 10 days or so, the Wizard, along with untold thousands of other Houstonians, has had to put up with the fact that the illustrious Texas Department of Transportation has scrapped up the top 4-6 inches of pavement off of FM 1093, also known as Westheimer Road. Since the Wizard lives right off of Westheimer, the matter has been of some importance to me, especially since I experienced a flat tire last Thursday while driving to work. I found a nail in my old tire, had to wait for AAA to pump up my baby tire so that I could drive the following morning to a Firestone to buy a new tire. The new tire set met back $90.
And so it was. As with many people, I was left wondering exactly why it was that the powers that be decided to repave what was for all practical purposes a perfectly fine road? The official answer was posted on Channel 2 news:
TxDOT says the roadway was hardly perfect before.
"As a driver, driving down a roadway, you don't see all the little things in the pavement," TxDOT spokeswoman Karen Othon said.
Othon says Westheimer Road had cracks that workers have sealed over the years to keep moisture from causing more damage.
The last time this section of Westheimer Road was resurfaced was 2002.
"The actual life of an asphalt pavement is 7 to 10 years, so it was time for it to be resurfaced," Othon said.
We discovered Westheimer Road wasn't actually scheduled to be repaved until April 2011, but when TxDOT received $2.6 billion in federal stimulus money, the state decided to put several projects on the fast track.
"There is a criteria established with the stimulus money, and if you don't use it and go by their guidelines, then we do lose it," Othon explained. "So this is something that we definitely wanted to take part of and use the money that is offered to us."
TX-DOT's website reports that this repaving project is currently estimated to cost $9.45 million.
And yet, that still begs to ask the question. Was this really necessary? I understand probably better than anybody that Westheimer, all eight lanes of it, probably carries some 100,000 (or more) vehicles everyday. Yet the road was in perfectly fine condition. This reminded me of when I lived off of Kirby Drive, where I saw the City of Houston lay asphalt on stretches of the street 2-3 times before deciding in 2001 to tear up the street - yet again - because the City decided to lay an underground storm sewer under the median connecting Buffalo Bayou and Braes, a project now in its second stage between San Felipe and Kirby south of Interstate 59.
It's actions like this, where people decide to do something about what is a non-issue, all because they are chasing after some handout money, that drive me nuts. That money could have been used to repave Richmond Avenue, for example, but God forbid we should repave parts of a badly bruised up Richmond Avenue because we all know that Metro so desperately wants to put a train down that street. So better to spend $1.5 billion to put a 10-11 mile light rail line down Richmond, rather than spend less than one percent of that amount to smooth out the wrong street. How is it that we can so often be so penny wise and pound foolish?
The repaving of Westheimer is not only a $10 million microcosm of the $787 billion stimulus plan, it is a microcosm of irrationality and absurdity of politics as a whole. People wonder why there are skeptics out there who question whether doing stuff like this is worth passing the bill on to our children's future. It isn't.
An item of note: Bob Lemer passes on that there will be a 90 minute workshop of City of Houston finances September 25th from 11:30am - 1:00pm. Cost is $35 for Houston CPA members and $50 for members of the public.
Wizard
Gayla Hamilton, a local real estate broker, asked the Wizard to post her comments she made on July 30th, 2009, to the proposed changes to Chapter 15 and Chapter 42 of the City of Houston Ordinances. Planning commission chair Carol Lewis cut her off before she could complete her remarks. These were Mrs. Hamilton's remarks in full.
My name is Gayla Hamilton and I am a native Houstonian, a member of Corridors United and a Texas Real Estate Broker engaging in residential and commercial real estate.
City Planning starts each of its Major Thoroughfare meetings by stating that it has nothing to do with METRO’s chosen alignment routes, nor anything to do with the Land Planning Studies by the City, nor the City of Houston’s Public Works consent agreement with METRO which allows numerous and unlimited variances to METRO and disclaim anything to do with METRO property takings. Have any of you reviewed the 60% completed Engineering Drawings on the alignments or right of way Paving Drawings? Have any of you reviewed the Metro-Parsons design element contracts on any of these streets?
How can the City Planning Commission ignore these KEY components? Your power point presentations state these components are UNIQUE, but instead it should state that they are Extremely Adverse based upon the Traffic Engineering Reports for these current major thoroughfare streets and all collector streets. How can you even consider making Post Oak Boulevard, Rusk, Capital, North Main or Martin Luther King Blvd. a Transit Street Corridor without considering all the elements that will affect these streets?
City Planning cannot vote YES to these street designations until ALL components mentioned above have been reviewed as a WHOLE. City Planning can NOT allow METRO to reduce current street lanes OR go to a 10 ft wide lane which was previously tried on Westheimer and did not work, nor give METRO the authority to close medians, restrict left turn lanes and create a grid-lock in all areas of the transit which will have a boomerang effect on all areas around the transit lines.
CORRIDORS UNITED has reviewed ALL reports to get a glimpse of our future traffic impact disasters. At least two members of this Commission are conflicted because of METRO connections - Dr. Lewis, and Mr. Freeman, and should be disqualified to serve or vote on the Transit designation.
City Planning must look at the traffic impact and the many variances that METRO is already demanding. If the whole is not examined, City Planning has not done due diligence and MUST NOT sign off on this and send it on to City Council for approval.
In Uptown on Post Oak Blvd., there is right in and right out only from parking lots with a total of 9 Traffic Lights between San Felipe and Westheimer. Post Oak Blvd. at San Felipe is losing one through lane going south and one key left turn from Post Oak Blvd. turning on to San Felipe. Left turns lanes will need to be 350 ft long which is longer than a football field according to the traffic report. Deterioration occurs at most of the intersections to an “F” - San Felipe, Post Oak Blvd. and Westheimer at the 610 West Loop. We believe the 2008 Traffic Count being used by Walter P. Moore is off by 50% based upon a previous traffic count in our possession.
What was left out of the METRO study is the significant impact on existing properties parking lots regarding ingress and egress. In other words the impact on Hotels, Office buildings and the Retail in our biggest sales tax area is going to be adversely affected. Without a Signalized Light at the property, drivers must turn right only. The Hampton Retirement home loses it current ability to turn left on Post Oak driving its traffic to West Alabama. Further, residents cannot turn left when going south on Post Oak Blvd. This is one of about 10 significant properties that lose ALL ability to turn left from its garages or current parking lots.
Even if a property has a signalized light like the Doubletree Hotel, what is the property’s ability to handle major functions with 1000 plus attendees? Instead of wide open median turns, drivers will have to wait for a light to turn green prior to turning left backing traffic up into the garage. This will be a traffic jam disaster! All this will create major traffic issues on all surrounding streets like Sage, Mc Cue, Hidalgo, West Alabama, Ambassador Way, Post Oak Lane, Del Monte and the traffic will disperse through neighborhoods like Tanglewood and Del Monte and affect all the residential apartments, townhomes and high-rises in the area. Grady Middle School currently backs up with carpools on San Felipe @ Sage. Can you even imagine the gridlock with a train crossing Post Oak @ San Felipe? What about the churches – St. Martin’s Episcopal, St. Michael’s Catholic and Baraka on the collector streets?
Corridor United thinks This Is Your Problem!!! All the reports and impacts should be reviewed entirely and as a whole before City Planning even considers going forward with this plan. Do not VOTE on this change of Major Thoroughfare to a Transit Corridor until City Planning has reviewed all these reports to do their due diligence. And please make sure the conflicted Planning Commissioners mentioned do not take part in these discussions or vote.
Mr. Kilkenny, as a Professional developer for 25 years and Vice Chair of Planning, please perform the same due diligence your Mischer Corp. would perform, by compiling the Traffic Effects contained in all these various reports, prior to City Planning voting to approve our city streets as a transit corridor street. Our city’s sustained or future growth will rely on our Street Grid which is being decimated by this new classification. 99% of us are going to take a serious hit. The Risk is not worth any reward.
The Southeast Corridor involving Downtown is a whole other issue. In Downtown, the Light Rail will be abutting existing garages on Rusk and Capitol Street with 40% of the current vehicle traffic going elsewhere. A 25-50% LOSS of current street lanes, basements and tunnels having to be rebuilt; the noise, sound and vibration; exclusive left or right turn lanes will reduce the number of current through lanes on Rusk and Capitol. The so-called Interline (from Capitol to Main) or (Main to Rusk) is unsafe, unmitigatable as well as grade level rail that will be crossing grade level rail. All of this will adversely impact our world renowned Theatre District, not to mention creating a traffic nightmare for downtown office workers.
Wizard
This past week, Houstonians learned from the local media of a series of high profile departures, or of people who are looking for jobs elsewhere, to escape from the twilight of Mayor Bill White's administration.
One, somewhat lower profile figure who apparently has recently left City employment was one, Ray Chong, who was Deputy of Traffic and Transportation in the City public works department. The Wizard knows that in addition to Mr. Chong's overseeing of various studies that he was one of Bill White's point men in the Ashby High Rise issue.
But it is about what was perhaps the last of Mr. Chong's studies that is the subject of this post. Smart Growth and planning proponent David Crossley notes that Mr. Chong made a presentation where he asserted that the average commute time in the Houston area in the year 2035 will be three hours!
That's right gentle readers, the City of Houston's recently departed Traffic director stated that Houstonians will face 3 hour commutes in a mere 26 years time. Of course, Mr. Chong and company made a presentation with a mobility study (or should we call it an immobility study?) to back up that assertion, but that still doesn't erase the basic assertion.
Now, if one thinks rather deeply about such an issue, one comes to realize that there is an enormous amount at stake for millions of Houston area residents when a high level City bureaucrat makes such a statement.
The current Houston area 2035 plan envisions spending some $77 billion in public funds over the next quarter of a century on road related projects and transit. However, Mr. Chong stated that he and his team incorporated all of those projects into his studies and still came to the conclusion that Houstonians will be wasting three hours of their day in a quarter of a century commuting back and forth to work. In other words, Houstonians and their public officials will be spending upwards of three billion dollars per year, every year, for the next 26 years, but despite that enormous sum of public monies being spent, Houstonians one way traffic commute will skyrocket from 26 minutes in 2005 - 2010 time frame to 90 minutes in 2035! That, gentle readers, is a very powerful statement - in a matter of one generation, Houston's transportation system will effectively get overwhelmed and collapse, despite spending tens of billions of dollars on transportation related projects and issues. That is a statement that many influential Houstonians, like members of the Greater Houston Partnership or just about any local elected official - including the Mayor, would not like to see made public.
If you take the report seriously, then the report states that the amount of roads of all classifications within City of Houston limits will rise roughly only 10 percent, while the job base will rise from 1.5 million to 2.1 million, a nearly 40 percent rise. Mr. Chong's report also projects that City population rising from 2.1 million to 2.7 million. On the face of it, Mr. Chong's prognostications may seem to be true. It points to a future of Houston neglecting to do enough to keep up its transportation network with the demands that the future populace will place on it. That however, is on the face. The Wizard knows that such a sky is falling type catastrophe is not going to occur.
First of all, one has to take in the magnitude of what Mr. Chong is asserting. Yes, it is true that urbanized areas that have higher populations do exhibit higher work travel times and greater traffic congestion, but the Wizard has traveled far in this world and has seen a lot of cities. Two years ago, I spent 9 weeks in London, a city whose metropolitan area has roughly twice as many residents as Houston does, in a smaller geographical area (and hence with a population density several times higher than that of Houston), with demonstrably narrower roads and much higher reliance on slower public transportation. The result? London has an average commute time of 42 - 51 minutes. This study states that in outer London, the commute time, where cars dominate, is 30 minutes, while in inner areas of London where public transportation dominates, the commute times are roughly 55 minutes. Meanwhile, in the 2005 U.S. census study cited above, New York and Chicago have commute times of 38 minutes and 33 minutes respectively.
The point being made here, if I may be so blunt, is that what Mr. Chong is saying is garbage. It overlooks that real estate developers and landlords, as well as employers and employees, all make decisions as to where to locate. Very few people will tolerate making a 3 hour daily commute, much less a 2 hour commute, and they will adapt accordingly, often by deciding to leave a little earlier or later to get to their jobs. The average length of a commute by car is roughly 7.5 miles, while a commute by public transportation is about 5 miles. Mr. Chong is then saying that traffic flows throughout the entire area will drop to an average of about 5 miles per hour for vehicle traffic!. This is nonsense.
Instead, a far, far more likely scenario of what will unfold in the future is that the Houston area will probably continue on its current pattern of slow densification combined with some suburbanization. Such a pattern would go a long way to mitigating most of the catastrophic horrors envisioned in this mobility study. I could foresee my 20 minute morning commute and my 25-30 evening minute commute lengthening by 5-10 minutes in a worst case scenario, but even if it did then all that would do is prompt me to either move closer to work, or to switch jobs.
One item that Mr. Chong's story may be more to the mark on is the assertion that public transportation's share of commuting trips will drop from 3.8 percent to 3.3 percent. One big story that has not been reported by the media concerning recent controversies surrounding eminent domain issues and cost estimates behind Metro's North and Southeast corridors is that in its FY 2010 report to Congress, the FTA is stating that spending $897 million on the North Corridor rail alignment is going to result in a mere 7,500 new riders being attracted to using transit (see page 221 of the report). The Southeast Corridor rail alignment is projected to cost $911 million and is expected to attract a mere 4,500 new riders to transit (see page 227 of the FTA report). Yes gentle readers, you read that correctly. The FTA is telling Congress that it is recommending helping Metro spend $1.8 billion to attract 12,000 new riders to rail transit, a figure that works out to spending $150,000 to attract a new rider to transit. Meanwhile, my yet to be completed FY 2008 - FY 2009 ridership numbers are indicating that Metro lost 10-20 percent of its ridership over the past year. If we continue to pursue such policies, then it is quite plausible that Houston's transit agency will end up bankrupting itself merely to substitute rail transit for bus transit, but not gaining any meaningful market share of transportation trips or doing anything to alleviate traffic congestion. Indeed according to Metro's federal enviornmental impact statements, the agency intends to cut off road lanes available to vehicle traffic along most of the routes where it wants to run rail.
With that aside, reports like this mobility study remind me of how ridiculous it is to write studies and plans that portend to see 30 years or more into the future, something that has been cemented into modern day American metropolitan urban planning, when we will have no idea of what the full picture of future conditions will be like. The reader should be reminded that the London Underground's first rail lines were built in the late 19th century to as a response to extremely heavy traffic congestion along roads in London that were causing traffic flows to slow down to the point where a wagon of vegetables would spoil because it was taking an entire day for a wagon driver to cross the length of the city. Hence, there is a good argument to be made that it is far better to make transportation spending decisions on a case by case basis, based on observations of heavy and rising traffic congestion, and on a shorter time scale of perhaps 10 years, than it is based on some grand vision of what you think the far future is going to be like.
A final disclaimer and something to think about: The Wizard will be of retirement age in 2035 and most likely won't be doing too much daily travel anyway! :)
Wizard
This past Saturday, the Houston Chronicle published an editoral on the City of Houston's finances. The editoral from Houston's newspaper of record generally offering praise for Mayor Bill White's handling of the City of Houston's public monies in a worldwide economic downtown. The Chronicle's editorial board wrapped up their assessment of the Mayor's financial wizardry with a statement that
With little more than 7 months remaining in his last term, Mayor White has deftly steered Houston through both fiscal and tropical storms. His successor will have a tough act to follow.
Hmmm. The Wizard decided to make his own assessment of the City's finances. I spent part of this evening gazing into my crystal ball, from whence I found the City of Houston's fiscal year 2008 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (aka CAFR).
Amongst the items of interest are:
1) The status of the City's pension plans. There are three plans listed; one for the firefighters, one for the police officers, and the Municipal Pension system that covers everyone else. The status of these plans can be read on page 123 of the report:
A) The actuarial value of the assets of the firefighter's pension plan was $2 billion in 2004 and $2.633 billion in 2008. The accrued liabilities in 2004 were $2.266 billion in 2004 and $2.892 billion in 2008. Overall, the funding ratio of the firefighters plan improved from 88 percent to 91 percent.
B) The actuarial value of the assets of the police officer's pension plan was $2.394 billion in 2004 and $3.005 billion in 2008. The accrued liabilities in 2004 were $2.875 billion in 2004 and $3.858 billion in 2008. Overall, the funding ratio of the police officer's plan dropped from 83 percent to 78 percent. In 2002, the police officer's plan was funded at a ratio of 90 percent.
C) The Municipal Employees pension plan had assets of $1.501 billion in 2004 and $2.194 billion in 2008. The accrued liabilities in 2004 were $2.634 billion in 2004 and $3.128 billion in 2008. Note that the liabilities in 2004 were $3.278 billion. Overall, the funding ratio of the MEPS plan was 57 percent in 2004 and 70 percent in 2008.
One wonders how much of an improvement executing a lien against the downtown Hotel of the Americas improved the HMEPS balance sheet? Better yet, the City is keeping its funding ratios more or less the same, but the dollar values of the mismatch between assets and liabilities is growing. Is the City accruing pension and other liabilities that it cannot afford?
2) On page 246 of the report, one can read about the amount of general bonded debt outstanding owed by the City. In the time frame between 2004 and 2008, the amount outstanding rose from $1,979,786,000 to $2.926,444,000. On page 209 of the report, the CAFR states that the amount of taxable property went up from $103 billion to $135 billion. Per Capita debt levels went up from $985 to $1325 per City resident.
It seems to the Wizard that property values are not increasing at a rate that would sustain continued bonding to accrue, especially since we are in a recession.
2) On page 226 of the Adobe file (or page 196 of the City CAFR), one can read that the total primary CoH net assets have fallen from $5.371 billion in 2003 to $3.891 billion in 2008, a drop of about $1.5 billion. The Wizard is not an accountant, but it seems that during Mayor White's tenure as Mayor, the City devoured its accrued capital (in all of its forms) in order to keep the ship of state afloat.
3) On page 229 of the document, the City states that general revenues from property taxes went up from $639,888,000 in 2003 to $829,837,000 in 2008. The difference between property taxes from 2007 - 2008 was a rise in property taxes collected from $738,578,000 to $829,837,000. According to the Mayor's revenue cap, it seems that Houstonians may be in for a bit of a refund if Council actually follows the cap.
It was also noted recently that Richard Vacar, a longtime powerful administrator of the Houston Airport system retired abruptly. ABC's Mya Shay broke the story and the Chronicle is following it.
Speculation on Vacar's retirement has focused on Vacar's involvement with airport operations in other cities and country, denoting that a non-profit was involved on the deal. Kevin and company talk about it here, wondering about transparency issues or shoddy deal making that would reflect on the Mayor.
A better question to ask is why did the Houston Airport system start working on such deals with airports elsewhere in the first place? The motive for that, gentle readers, can be discerned from the 2001 City Revcap battle and Mayor White's counter charter amendment, which the seems to have prevailed in court. The Mayor's charter amendment offered a cap in increases in revenues from property taxes and drainage fees to the lower of of 4.5 percent per year, or the increase in population and indexed inflation.
It should be obvious to readers that any monies to be gained from the Houston Airport system would not fall under the Mayor's Revcap charter amendment, whereas it would have under the citizens Revcap. Ergo, it would make sense for the City to aggressively pursue such avenues for increased revenues to come into City coffers since they would not be covered by the Mayor's charter amendment.
I am at a loss in explaining why the Mayor canned Mr. Vacar. That is a job for the media to uncover. Better yet, will one of Houston's fourteen City Council members work up the political courage to confront the Mayor, a man whose administration is seeing the twilight of its rule, at the Council table and ask a simple question: Why Mr. Vacar was abruptly asked to take a walk?
Sigh... Such are the joys of taking a job that is so inherently political in nature.
Wizard
This past Sunday, the Wizard took his weekly stroll down to the nearby HEB grocery store, a walking trip that is about 12 minutes in length. I came back home with three of my eco-friendly, reusable HEB grocery bags (promoted by Eva Longoria!) full of groceries that set me back about $70. It was a bit of a strain, as one of the bags had two twelve packs of soda in it. The reusable bags are easily strong enough to survive such a jaunt, but it's never easy to walk home with 2 twelve packs of drinks in one bag. That is, unless that's all I am carrying. One twelve pack is fine, even when packed with lots of other groceries. Nonetheless, my exertions were enough to invoke sympathy from a neighbor of mine, who opened the door for me towards the end of my trip home.
Houston has long been crucified as being completely auto dependent. Complaints abound about Houstonians having to make a proverbial mile drive just to get a quart of milk, or so goes the urban legend. Actually, my grocery store is only about six-tenths of a mile away from me. Better yet, I have access to two convenience stores within 300 yards of where I live, both of which will sell me a quart of milk albeit at a higher price than HEB will. But then again, that is why they are called convenience stores. You pay for the convenience.
Yet, even that relatively short walk is enough for many of my neighbors to notice that I do this. The girls seem to be scared about walking to the store for fear of getting robbed, even though they would be walking down the greatest and busiest street in Houston. Some of my neighbors seem to think that walking to nearby places makes one look like a homeless bum in the eyes of others, but I could give a damn what others think. Still others find quaint amusement over the fact that I walk around the neighborhood to get my stuff done, like one couple who waived merrily to me recently one morning before work when I came walking back after picking up my dry cleaning.
And yet, it turns out that my area of town is quite walkable. There is quite a bit of stuff that can be reached within that 12 minute walking radius from around my abode, including quite a few restaurants, my dentist, my dry cleaners, liquor stores, shopping for hardware, office supplies, some furniture, physical fitness gear, not to mention convenience stores. I have considered buying a bicycle, which would make the Galleria, at 2 miles distance, reachable within 12 minutes or so. I sometimes wonder why my neighbors don't walk more to get to nearby places, but it doesn't bother me too much. They have their reasons. Some might cite trying to scurry across eight lanes of traffic across Westheimer, but even fraidy cats could be invited to walk if skyways were built that crossed the length of the street.
So how walkable is my neighborhood? Well gentle readers, there is a website now out there now called Walk Score that attempts to answer that very question. The website declares that it has an algorithm that it uses to measure how walkable your neighborhood is. Just punch in your street address and presto! you get a score on a scale of 1-100 which measures how walkable your neighborhood is. The higher the score generated, the more walkable your neighborhood.
So, how does the Wizard's neighborhood measure up on this walkability score? I punched in my address and discovered that, lo and behold, my neighborhood comes in at a very respectable 77 out of 100, indicating that, yes, my neighborhood is very walkable. According to Walk Score's gradings of cities around America, my neighborhood would come in at at #4 out of the top 40 cities, beating out every other city with the exception of San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Indeed according the the Walk Score website, I am able to get around without owning a car.
I could conceive of trying to live in my neighborhood without a car. If I lived within a distance of 2-3 miles of a job - say if I worked in the Galleria or off of Post Oak Boulevard - I could just about do it. Even if I had kids, they could take a bicycle to nearby schools. My main problem would be getting to and from my various social activities, as many of my friends live and meet some distance from where I live. As it is, I drive only about 6,000 miles per year, a figure low enough to prompt an auto mechanic friend of mine to say "Wow, you really baby your car!"
Walk Score has a Walk Score map of Houston, so you can look up your neighborhood. My old neighborhood scored an 86 out of 100, which was no surprise to me since I used to walk to a Borders bookstore, as well as a Blockbuster, Book Stop, the post office, a grocery store, and a bakery. And yet, again, none of my neighbors walked around my old neighborhood except to walk their dogs, much like my neighbors do where I live now.
So why won't Houstonians walk when according to Walk Score, they live in perfectly walkable neighborhoods? I've stated some reasons my neighbors have given me above, but who knows? Maybe my old neighbors just didn't feel like walking to the grocery store then and my current neighbors don't feel like walking to the grocery store now. Better yet, one wonders why the City of Houston planning department has poured an enormous amount of time and money planning urban corridors, with the expressed purpose of getting people to walk, when they already live in what are arguably walkable neighborhoods.
Wizard
Well, well, well. I'll be adding addendums to this blog entry as the day wears on, but as gentle readers know, the Wizard was working the Houston Tea Party events as a member of the welcoming committee. It was my job to act as a crier, encouraging tea party attendees to sign up so that we could get an accurate head count of the number of people attending.
One of the members of our committee took all of our sign in cards and sheets home. She told us that there were so many people waiting to get in at the start of the event that two women volunteered on the spot to join our committee. She stayed up until 3:00am this morning counting the number of signatures.
We collected 8,532 signatures for the event. We filled up 248 single pages of 20 signatures, 31 pages where signatures filled up both sides of the sheet (40 signatures), and 139 sign in cards. The discrepancy between the numbers of sheets filled up and the total attendees is accounted for because some people signed in for themselves and their spouses, boy or girl friends, children, or other family members. Since some people indicated to us that they did not want to sign anything but rather just attend the event, we believe that there were probably about 10,000 people who attended the Houston Tea Party.
Incredibly, we had 389 people check off the "I want to volunteer" column, indicating they want to work for future events. We may well put them to work, as we are contemplating holding an event for July 4th.
More later. It's time to go back to work.
Addendum: Here is a photograph of the Wizard at work at the April 15th gathering.
Wizard
So, the Wizard is at it again...
The Wizard will be working the Houston Tea Party, to be held at Jones Plaza in downtown Houston. No, the Wizard will not tell gentle readers how it was that I got involved with the Houston Tea Party, as I did not even hear about the original Tea Party until some two weeks after it had occurred. How I got involved came about in a round about way anyway.
More to the point, I have gotten quite concerned about what has happened in Washington over the past 8 or so months, starting with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac excitement. There has been quite a bit of reporting about President Obama's $3.6 trillion federal budget for fiscal year 2010. What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that this will represent some 26 percent of the U.S. GDP for this upcoming year. Before World War Two, federal expenditures were under 10 percent of overall economic activity. This jumped enormously during the Second World War. After a brief whittling down period between WWII and the Korean War, federal expenditures vascillated between 18-22 percent of economic activity since the start of the Cold War. Even after the Cold War ended, the Clinton Administration pared down the military by one third, but domestic expenditures expanded to fill in the breach. Still, Clinton was - gasp! - the most fiscally responsible president America has had over the past 30 years, largely thanks to facing a hostile Republican led Congress for his last six years in office.
The bottom line is, federal expenditures have now reached 26 percent of GDP, and that represents an enormous jump in overall governmental involvement in the economy.
* Just yesterday, a story came across the wires that the federal deficit for February 2009 was $192 billion! It used to be that people were outraged when that was the federal deficit for an entire year.
* Brian Shelly notes that Social Security is going to go into the red eight years earlier than was previously projected.
* The Bush Administration told the American public just months after invading Iraq that the army would be coming home in a few months. Well, here we are 5 years, and over $500 billion later, and we're still there.
* The Obama Administration wants to push through universal health insurance, at some completely unknown cost.
* The Bush and Obama Administrations have given AIG $180 billion. I have no idea where it went, other than some vague notion that it went to cover AIG's screw ups over credit swaps.
* The Obama Administration is bailing out the car companies and has fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Now, a better term for the American auto manufacturers would be to call them Government Motors.
Some years ago here in Houston, we had a big company that completely failed called Enron. Politicians couldn't run away fast enough from that debacle, other than to send in the prosecutors to witch hunt Enron's executives.
One thing to thing about is this. Will Americans not be able to buy cars or insurance if either GM or AIG fail? Were Americans not able to obtain natural gas just because Enron failed?
* State and local governments don't look much better, mostly because of massive pension obligations to workers on the government payrolls.
* Because certain interest groups and the media have whipped up the public into a lather over global climate change, the Obama Administration is contemplating either a carbon tax, or a cap and trade regime for carbon emissions. Notably, there's been no talk of how this is going to affect my pocketbook. But according to Reason magazine, a cap and trade regime could turn out to be nothing more than yet another monster of a corporate welfare program. Some 2,300 lobbyists have besieged Capitol Hill on the matter, a huge sign how much is at stake. It is also a sign that an awful lot of rent seeking is going on.
* Taxes from every level of government now take up about 35 percent of my money. Taxation is now my largest personal expense, far exceeding my second largest expense, which is mortgage and fees for my housing.
The Wizard, as usual, will not get to make any speeches. Others always seem to grab the spotlight, even though I am often able to evoke ovations when I speak and have been told countless times how articulate I am at the microphone, even though I have only 2-3 minutes to get my points across. Instead events like this always need people to do the dirty work, including whipping out the wallet to put up money for the event, which nobody ever seems to want to do. Some people I know are quite good at wanting to pass out stuff and committing others to do the dirty work on their causes, while running away as fast as they can when it comes to actually carrying the load of getting the job done. Others will also be pushing their messages, while I don't know how many times I've had to put up with old fogies who don't get off their rear ends to do a damned thing to organize events, to defend property rights, or liberty, tell me how we are to handle the problems that we will face in putting on this event. Instead, I will likely have to help pick up the trash after this thing is over. That's the dreary reality of working in the trenches of grass roots politics.
And yet, I am going to work this event on Wednesday because I am seriously starting to wonder about the financial stability of my country and because of what I perceive to be an immense grab for power by the Obama Administration to reach ever further into American life. I'll do the mundane things that the Houston Tea Party event will require to be successful because I don't want to live in an America that allows me to only have a little bit of pocket money left over at the end of the week. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
So, the Wizard will be at the sign in tables, helping to distribute some of the 6,000 adhesive stickers for people's names that I've purchased for the event. I have a feeling that I'll be seeing some of you there.
Wizard
Addendum: To **** with you, Paul Krugman.
When Al Gore was Bill Clinton's vice president, the (non) - issue of urban sprawl could have been described as something of a second tier issue in American life. To be sure, urban sprawl had its usual detractors, but the matter was mostly something of a concern to certain interest groups.
This state of affairs has changed with the election of Barak Obama as President, where the New York Times noted that in February 2009 that the President said
"The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over,”, urging officials to employ “innovative thinking” when deciding how to spend their transportation money.
Moreover, considering where on the political outlook scales Mr. Obama sits, one can imagine that his administration would look to the Brookings Institution for ideas on many matters, including urbanization.
What a discouragement, therefore, it must be for many in the anti-suburbanization camp to read of a study that was just published by Brookings entitled Job Sprawl Revisited: The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Employment. The Brookings study, which compares the results of a spatial location analysis of private sector jobs across 98 metropolitan areas across the United States, denoting the differences in job locations between the years 1998 and 2006. Notably, private sector job decentralization occurred in 95 of the 98 metropolitan areas studied, and that does not bode well for central cities. Also, in 17 out of the 18 industries studied experienced job decentralization.
The Brookings study asserts a series of ailments that result from job sprawl, including higher water and sewer infrastructure costs, spatial mismatch where employees can have trouble reaching appropriate work, lower pace of innovation, and higher energy consumption.
Noting or complaining about all these issues is nice, but doing so begs one to ask a question that the Brookings study fails to ask, much less answer. If all of these ailments are (or were) occurring during this time frame, then why were private sector employers continuing to move away from central cities anyway?
One aspect of this issue is to look at the types of employment that are locating furthest away from the center. According to the study, it is the retail, construction, and manufacturing type jobs that are the ones that are most prone to moving outwards away from the central business districts (CBD's). The Wizard is willing to bet that these industries are the ones whose land use requirements are the largest. It would behoove them to locate where land is cheapest, which happens to be at the suburban fringe. Not doing so would put them at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis with their competitors in the marketplace. As far as retail goes, it also pays to move closer to their customers, and that happens to be in the suburbs.
One issue the Wizard decided to look into was the price of petroleum and of gasoline during this period. This chart shows that during the 1998 - 2006 time frame, the price of a barrel of petroleum rose from a post 1997 Asian economic crisis low of $12 per barrel to a high of $60 per barrel in 2006. The price of a gallon of gas went up from $1 per gallon in 1998 to $3 per gallon by the summer of 2006, yet the trend towards decentralizing of the spatial distribution of jobs continued to occur.
According to the study, Houston is one of the 53 metropolitan areas that is experiencing rapid decentralization of jobs, meaning that job shares were flat or declining in the CBD while growing in the outer rings. The report estimates that there were 1,750,155 jobs within 35 miles of downtown Houston in 1998 and 1,975,566 jobs within 35 miles of downtown Houston 2006. We can set up a table to see how many jobs were located where:
1998: number of jobs: 1,750,155
2006: number of jobs: 1,975,566
1998: percentage located within 3 miles of CBD: 14.2
2006: percentage located within 3 miles of CBD: 11.6
1998: number of jobs within 3 miles of CBD: 248,522
2006: number of jobs within 3 miles of CBD: 229,166
1998: percentage located 3-10 miles from CBD: 36.8
2006: percentage located 3-10 miles from CBD: 32.4
1998: number of jobs 3-10 miles from CBD: 644,057
2006: number of jobs 3-10 miles from CBD: 640,083
1998: percentage located 10-35 miles away from CBD: 49.1
2006: percentage located 10-35 miles away from CBD: 56.0
1998: number of jobs 10-35 miles from CBD: 857,576
2006: number of jobs 10-35 miles from CBD: 1,106,317
Now then, it should be noted that the City of Houston is approximately 640 square miles. A radius of 10 miles encompasses 314 square miles, ergo that is just under 50 percent of Houston's acreage, discounting the fact that there are some areas within this circle that are not under the City of Houston's jurisdiction, such as West University, the Memorial villages, and perhaps Bellaire and Pasedena. It should be noted that the number of jobs within 10 miles of downtown has, for all intensive purposes, stayed stable. Peter Brown told the ITE a while back that Houston was getting only 15 percent of new area population and 23 percent of new area jobs with the rest going outside city limits. If that were so, then that would infer that much of the new private sector employment that Houston is attracting is deciding to locate in the outermost areas of the City itself, with the rest of area job growth occurring outside City limits. Conceivably, the City Council may decide that the only way in which Houston can actually capture some of the tax monies associated with those jobs is to do so the politically unpopular, old fashioned way - via annexation.
This report also casts doubt upon the idea of using light rail as a method of capturing any job growth. Metro started operation of the light rail line in January 2004, a full 2-3 years before the termination of the study period. Yet according to the study, practically all of the job growth in the Houston metropolitan area occurred more than 10 miles away from the CBD.
The current economic downtown that started in late 2007 is not accounted for in this study. Unemployment across the United States has gone up from roughly 4.5% to 8.5%, while it is at roughly 6.5% in Houston. It might be surmised that there may be a gain in density once the economy recovers on the assumption that the cost of transportation fuels will once again go up. But even if there are gains in population density for reasons of continually rising fuel costs, it doesn't necessarily mean that gains in density will occur within the already heavily developed portions of the urbanized area, particularly if job sprawl continues to occur. Motor vehicles could adapt via a change in propulsion, where electricity becomes a preferred form of power. Households could also decide to trade within their indifference curves of their household budgets, giving up larger house sizes for holding on to the mobility offered by the automobile in the event that transportation becomes more expensive.
The Wizard awaits the next Brookings study on this subject. I suspect that the 2010 Census will tell much about these matters.
Wizard
KHOU-TV's Jeremy Desel ran a story this evening concerning the latest discrepancies about the cost of Metro Rail. It seems that business owner Paul Magaziner came across some information that contradicts what the unelected Metro board has been stating recently about project costs. Moreover, the source of the discrepancies is coming from none other than Metro itself.
Last month, the Metro board announced that it had approved a deal (though it had not signed a contract) with Parsons Transport Group where Parsons would lead a consortium to build four of the Metro Solutions Phase 2 rail lines, but not including the Wheeler / Richmond rail alignment. This deal would involve building a total 20 miles of Metro's planned 30 miles light rail for a price $1.46 billion. The costs of the North Corridor and Southeast Corridors were announced to be $387 and $441 million respectively. Desel's accompanying news story showed footage of last month's board meeting where Chairman David Wolff expressed optimism of falling costs, presumably due to a fall in materials costs resulting from the current economic downturn.
However, apparently in an FTA Letter of No Prejudice communication dated March 23rd 2009, the costs of the North and Southeast Corridors were stated at $896,797,000 and $911,211,000 respectively.
Desel's story quotes Metro VP George Smalley:
... in no way was there an attempt to mislead the public.
Smalley also says that the $900 million per line numbers mentioned in the Federal Transit Administration letters are likely the best estimate.
"The number that is in the FTA letter is the latest estimate. I’m not going to say it will be the final number. I don't think it will be," Smalley said.
Smalley says the cost of acquiring land, rail cars for the future and financing are what make up the difference between the contract cost and the actual cost.
Ergo, Metro has been telling the public and Parsons one thing and the FTA something entirely different concerning project costs. At $897 million, the 5.4 miles of the North Corridor will run $166 million per mile. The Southeast Corridor will run at $134 million per mile. At costs like this, the 30 miles of Phase 2 will run $4.5 billion plus, a figure the Wizard predicted 18 months ago.
Taxpayers deserve better than this. The discrepancies between both sets of numbers is between $2 - $3 billion, a figure so large that the entire Metro board and Metro President Frank Wilson all need to be fired, if for no other reasons that they have shown themselves to be incompetent and untrustworthy. And, this project needs to be shelved once and for all.
Wizard
On Tuesday March 31st, the Wizard traveled with some of his friends to the magical fantasy land of Oz the State Capital to pay a visit to see some of our esteemed State legislators. But the Wizard did not take the time out to make such a journey to make a mere house call. No gentle readers, the Wizard had some bidness (as we say in Texas) to attend to. In my limited spare time, the Wizard has been working to help try to get some eminent domain legislation passed in the 2009 / 81st Texas State Legislature.
To recap, the SCOTUS ruled in favor of the City of New London in the Kelo vs. New London case in 2005. In reaction, the Texas Legislature did pass some minor reform in 2005, but Governor Perry vetoed some very good eminent domain legislation in the 2007 session. Ergo, here we are in 2009 trying again to get some meaningful reforms passed.
The Wizard ended up seeing 6-7 legislative staff members over a period of 5 hours, while others whom I was with spoke to dozens of others. We also participated in a news conference. The vibe I got was that there is clearly a mood to address eminent domain, but as always the devil is in the details when it comes to how effective a piece, or several pieces, of legislation turn out to be.
Currently, there are at least 7 different bills in play. The best eminent domain bills that people need to get behind are:
1) H.J.R. 14. This is a House Joint Resolution which strongly defines eminent domain such that it would put an end to the practice for private gain. This bill has a provision to amend the Texas Constitution, and sends the matter to the voters come November 3, 2009 should 2/3rd's of the House and Senate vote in favor of it. This would bypass Governor Perry's veto pen.
2) HB 1483 and SB 18. These two bills complement H.J.R 14.
3) H.B. 417, which has strong language to address the issue of municipal abuse of what is blight, and using "blight" as a pretext for using eminent domain for private gain.
4) HB 4, which has some good buyback provisions in the event that the government doesn't actually put your land to use within a certain time frame after taking it from you.
As of this writing, the weak bills are SB 533, H.J.R. 31, and S.J.R 42. We cannot afford to have these bills pass, then have the legislature (and the Governor) turn and tell the people that - you see, we have done something about eminent domain. Don't support them!
This afternoon, KHOU-TV reminded us once again why Texans need eminent domain reform when the station carried the story of Irene Robles and her sons Ron and Mike. The Wizard knows the Robles family, indeed Ron and Mike were with me in Austin talking to legislators last Tuesday. I know that they have been fighting Harris County Metro and its plans to build Metro Rail in the North Corridor. I watched as the Robles brothers collected some 3,500 signatures of North Corridor residents who opposed Metro Rail that they turned in to Sheila Jackson Lee's office, but to no avail.
Metro wanted 178 square feet of the Robles' property, which is directly on one of the streets where Metro wants to build at - grade light rail. That doesn't sound like much, but the strip they want is going to put the street right of way directly up against the Robles' front door, and trust me, this isn't the only instance where this is happening. There is an argument that could be made that doing this would render the property undesirable or not useful for the purpose for which it is being put to now, which if Metro were to have any morals (as opposed to having any ethics), then it would be incumbent on Metro to simply offer Mrs. Robles and her sons a fair price for the entire property rather than simply taking a sliver of it.
Moreover, the KHOU story noted that Metro initially offered the Robles family $2,000 for their 178 square feet, an amount that adds up to offering a petty $11.24 per square foot for property that is within one and a half miles of downtown Houston. The parties went to a hearing, where Metro bumped up the offer to $12,000 (or some $67.50 per square foot), but it remains to be seen if the Robles's will take this or go to court for something else.
The problems faced by the Robles family are commonplace in eminent domain issues; that governments or agencies' swiping a portion of a property ends up rendering it unfit for its current use (and thereby kneecapping its current property owners via devaluing the property), the matter of low balling land owners and forcing them to spend money going to court, and so forth. Moreover, there is a question of whether Metro will in fact actually build the rail lines. The expectation is that they will, but what if the FTA doesn't grant Metro the money? Then the agency would find itself sitting on a bunch of parcels of land which it would otherwise have no use for. Or would they?
The group of good pending legislation (HB 4, HB 417, SB 18 / HB 1483, and HJR 14) would address all of these issues. The State would be forced to offer a fair deal up front. Blight would be much harder to use as a rationale for condemning land, and if governments take land but don't put it to use within a certain time frame then previous private owners could get it back at the price they were offered previously.
Eminent domain is one of those slippery slope issues that Americans have learned they constantly have to keep fighting with over time. The courts, whose job would otherwise presumably be to protect citizens from an ever overreaching Leviathan, have effectively abrogated enforcing the 5th Amendment over the past 100 years, leaving citizens to struggle with sub level governments over legislative remedies for rights that they otherwise should not have to be fighting for.
The war continues. Here are some links:
KFDA covers the news conference.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram's coverage.
Wizard
Crime isn't an issue that the Wizard often writes about. Despite the fact that criminal activity is something that is pervasive in all societies and a fact of life that nobody can ever get around, it wasn't something that interested me too much. Maybe it was because I grew up in a fairly safe middle to upper-middle class neighborhood that made me not dwell on the topic very much, or perhaps it was my generally optimistic view on life that made me not think about crime, but I digress.
Maybe it was reading the story about Richardo Richell that scared the daylights out of me, or maybe it was reading that Conroe police officer Michael Tindall has been accused of robbing a bank for a petty $28,000, an amount that may well not be enough to cover his attorney's fees for defending him. Or maybe it was reading that there are bookshelves full of case studies that have been done that indicate that eyewitness identification of those accused are often shown to be mistaken that set me to writing about the need for a regional criminal lab.
City Councilwoman Jolanda Jones wrote an editorial recently discussing the matter of a regional crime lab. Ms. Jones makes a good point about the issue of Houston police running their own crime lab and then trying to present its results in trial against defendants. Houston's problems are not unique, as this link and all these stories from searching for the term "crime labs" suggest. But the issue may well go further than simply creating a regional crime lab. It has to do with the idea that such a lab would be funded by the law enforcement agencies of the region that would be the - how shall one say - customers of such an institution. One reasonable question to ask is that who would be making the decisions on hiring and qualifications for staffing such an institution? It would seem to me that it would be... the government!
It seems to me that there are two things that need to be added to enable a regional crime lab to be more effective at doing its job. First is that such a lab would need to have enough money in its budgets to hold onto accredited and qualified personnel and clear its case loads in a timely manner, and second it would seem that the criminal defense bars of the region need to have someone on site to verify procedures and lab results from the crime lab. After all, that was the very problem that Ms. Jones and others discovered with the Houston police department crime lab to begin with. Perhaps all who are accused, whether they are accused of a simple traffic violation or of something much worse, could be assessed, as part of their bail, a non-refundable token sum of money that would go towards funding the regional crime lab, and could also go towards funding defense bar inspection and oversight of such a lab. Not doing so could open the door to merely transferring the problems of shoddy lab conditions, poor management of samples, not to mention sloppy handling of evidence, from a Houston police department run lab to the new regional lab. That is simply unacceptable.
Wizard
I suppose the Wizard is a little late on commenting on Harris County Metro's decision to use Obama money - aka federal stimulus funds - to convert its current HOV lanes to high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. I was thinking of not posting anything at all on the subject on the grounds that I did not have anything new to say about the matter that somebody hadn't groused about before - that the lanes were allegedly not going to help with traffic congestion, that the lanes were allegedly not being used enough already, that HOT lanes are only for owners of Lexus vehicles and not for the rest of us, and so on.
However there is one aspect of the HOV lane issue that has not been addressed in this recent spate of stories and public commentary and that, gentle readers, has to do with HOV lanes and the 2003 bond election ballot. You remember that election, don't you? The one where you, dear Houstonian, thought that you were voting for rail - right? Well, maybe its time we jar our memories and revisit some of what Metro proposed during the November 2003 bond election.
What few people remember is that there were several components in the November 2003 bond election ballot language. One of those components (we will leave out the others so as to not complicate things here) was that Metro said it would double the lane mileage of HOV lanes that would be available, via modifying the current HOV network to make it two way reversible.
Some months ago, former Houston mayoral candidate Bill King spoke before the Houston Property Rights Association about transportation. The Wizard queried Mr. King about the issue of reversible or two way HOV / HOT lanes. The Wizard inquired about the idea of reverse commutes whereby some people commute in the opposite direction simply because they live in the inner part of the urbanized area, but commute towards jobs that are located further out from the urban core. King stated that one aspect of HOV lanes operating only one way at a time, then reversing lane operations in the opposite direction for evening hours was that this reflected 1970's style thinking. The incorporation of two lanes of HOT lanes operating at all hours in both directions along the Katy Freeway reflects more modern thinking on urban mobility. The idea is to simply expand on this concept and push it all the way throughout the Houston area.
Poor people will in fact pay to use lanes, if it is important enough for them to use them. One of my many vivid memories of living in China 17-18 years ago was the willingness of ordinary Chinese, who at that time were making probably $40 - $50 per month, to pay for taxi trips when they really needed to get somewhere in a hurry. Even fairly short taxi trips in Beijing or Shanghai could set my Chinese friends and acquaintances back a full 1-2 days pay, but it never ceased to amaze me how many times they whipped out their purses and wallets to pay for a cab ride when they really wanted or needed to get somewhere fast. People really do make their decisions on the margin.
Then there are issues of legality. Arguably, since Metro stipulated that expanding the HOV / HOT lane concept was to be a part of the 2003 bond election, then the agency is obligated to actually come through with this promise. The agency has already effectively reneged on its promise of 50 percent more bus service in the metropolitan area. Not going through with doubling the number of route miles of HOV / HOT lanes would destroy what remains of the agency's credibility, reopening the charge that the 2003 bond election was nothing but about desperately desiring rail lines and condemnation zones for redevelopment.
The Chronicle editorial, published March 20th, 2009, stated that Metro would get to keep toll road monies raised. One aspect of the HOV / HOT lane conversion is that there are clearly some areas where it is going to be difficult to add an extra lane through reconfiguration of what is already there. One example of this is the buried stretch of Interstate 59 which runs through midtown Houston from downtown through the Greenway Plaza area, and onto IH-610 Loop. Monies raised through the collection of tolls should be dedicated towards widening the freeway, if need be, to accommodate the extra lane of traffic.
Next: We talk about the proposed regional crime lab.
Wizard
Today, the Houston Chronicle's new transportation beat writer Rosanna Ruiz broke the news that the unelected board of the Harris County Metropolitan Transit Authority decided not publicize the details of their Facility Provider (FP) contract with Parsons Transport Group before a board vote on the contract that is to be scheduled during a special meeting on Wednesday. The story generated tons of comments on the Chronicle's website, as well as a protest from Jennifer Pebbles from Texas Watchdog, and posts from various bloggers.
Well, what does the Wizard have to say about this? Not much, other than to reveal yet another small pearl that I possess in my treasure hoard. And what, pray tell is that? Well gentle readers, it just so happens that the Wizard possesses a copy of Metro's 2007 FP contract that the agency negotiated with the previous vendor, Washington Group International, which is now a part of URS Corporation. You see, I put in for a Freedom of Information request to Metro sometime around May or June of 2007 for a copy of Metro's contract with WGI. I received a copy of the FP contract, (number CT0700035 to be precise), and dated May 8, 2007, several weeks later at the cost of somewhere around fifty dollars.
The May 2007 FP contract that I received runs into many hundreds of pages and covers an astronomical number of issues; including (but not by any means limited to) estimated project costs for the first phase of the contract, not to mention delving into matters like stray current, provisions for dealing with hazardous materials, performance and reliability issues, ride quality requirements, design of train stations, access to records, contracting with small and disadvantaged businesses, indemnification and insurance issues, corrosion control, hopes and financing for transit oriented development, project bidding, dispute resolution, and so on. Yes, there really is a lot more to this than simply getting to take a trip on a rigid, non-maneuverable form of transportation and riding it without having to pay for it. The contract is so thick that it immediately put any thought of trying to copy it and posting it online out of the question.
The point being made here, however, is that Metro has in fact made available to interested members of the public copies of previous FP contracts. So why are David Wolff and company turning gun shy now?
Sigh...
Wizard
Inrix, a privately held provider of traffic data and traffic congestion solutions, recently published a national scorecard of traffic congestion, bottlenecks, and travel time indices of metropolitan areas across the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, Inrix collects data on road congestion, in part, from a million vehicles equipped with GPS-enabled devices like cellphones and car navigation systems. The company stated in the accompanying press release that the data was:
revealing a 30 percent decline in traffic congestion in 2008 during the peak periods on major roads in urban America. Overall the report found that 99 of the top 100 most populated cities in the U.S. experienced decreases in traffic congestion levels in 2008 as compared to the prior year. The Scorecard contains the most accurate and current information in the country regarding overall congestion and bottlenecks on nearly 50,000 miles of America’s major roadways, and is compiled using tens of billions of data points from INRIX’s network of nearly one million GPS-enabled cars and trucks traveling across over 800,000 miles of roads.
The report cites turbulent fuel prices and a struggling economy as sources for a consistent decline in overall traffic volume. Detroit, where the jobless rate climbed past 21 percent in 2008, saw the second largest decrease in congestion nationwide. Additionally, Riverside, Calif., which ranked third-highest in the nation in foreclosure activity during 2008, saw the highest drop in congestion of the nation’s larger regions.
“On average, Americans spent 13 hours less stuck in traffic in 2008 versus 2007,” said Bryan Mistele, INRIX president and CEO. “While less traffic is generally good news, the causes of it aren’t necessarily something to celebrate. Traffic congestion is an excellent indicator of trends, telling us whether businesses are shipping products, whether people are going to work, and whether shoppers are going to the mall. The Scorecard provides an amazing lens through which we can see these and other major events unfolding across the country.”
Traffic congestion really is a lens through which you can view overall activity in the broader economy. Only Baton Rouge Louisiana had worst traffic congestion in 2008 than in 2007. Also, Inrix wrote that
National congestion levels were essentially the same when comparing the first and second halves of 2008, thus it seems that higher fuel prices in early 2008 and the slower economy later in the year netted the same drop in overall congestion.
So, what about Houston? Well, Houston's scorecard can be viewed here. What I find interesting are two things. First, Houston's overall congestion is measured at only 34 percent of that found in Los Angeles, the most congested metropolitan area in the United States. That is because LA has the fewest miles per capita of freeways of any major metropolitan area in America. Second, the data confirms what is probably intuitively obvious to many Houstonians. The overall worst traffic bottlenecks in the Houston area are to be found in the Galleria area. Six out of the top eleven worst bottlenecks are found along IH 610 Loop (southbound and northbound) and various entry or exits to the Galleria, including Westheimer, San Felipe, and Post Oak Boulevard. The exit at 610 Loop and Richmond Avenue comes in at number 22 on the bottleneck list.
The good news is that none of Houston's interchanges make the top 100 list of Inrix's worst segments or interchanges for traffic bottlenecks. The bad news, comparatively, is that every single one of Houston's 25 worst bottlenecks climbed up the overall rankings for bottleneck severity when comparing the 2008 data to the 2007 data, but that almost certainly reveals that the downturn in 2008 has affected Houston less than it has other areas of the country, an observation confirmed by the fact that Houston's travel time index declined only slightly in 2008 verses 2007.
Enough for now. There are other things I want to write about, so stay tuned.
Wizard
This month's Houston Lifestyles magazine has a story on the last page of its dead tree edition (the online version of the story can be read here) which has both a fascinating perspective on Houston's historical experience with buses and trolleys, as well as a link to a wonderful, must see website on Houston's history put together by the Sloane Gallery.
To wit, here is what Houston Lifestyles and the Sloane Gallery had to say about the bus and rail issue:
It seems that every year we are presented with a new light rail expansion proposal. In 1923 the city of Houston enacted a plan to remove the trolley tracks on Main Street. The removal was completed in 1925 much to the delight of merchants and pedestrians. It was evident that a train running down Main Street did nothing to help the hundreds of retail shops that lined the boulevard. Today, we have a train on Main Street and a virtual ghost town of retail blight to go with it.
snip...
History provides us with ample evidence that rail is a successful way of moving people and freight. Unfortunately, history also illustrates how politicians refuse to take into consideration the hard learned lessons of the past in regards to rail placement.
I would correct the well meaning sentiments expressed by the good folks at both Houston Lifestyles and at the Sloane Gallery. The powers that be at Metro, as well as the rail constituency, knew damned well what they were doing. They knew that they had to run rail lines in every direction simply because in order to get the 2003 Metro Solutions election to pass muster at the ballot box, they had to promise something to each and every last constituency in Metro's 1285 square mile, far flung service area. That not only included building rail lines in every direction, it also meant promising new park and rides everywhere, more HOV lanes, 50 percent more bus service, etc. All of this was to be done, of course, without having to resort to raising taxes.
Addendum: Read this epistle from Swamplot about the $14 million subsidized Houston Pavillions project, which is located right on Main Street along the Metro rail line.
Sigh...
Wizard
On January 29th, 2009, John and Mary Jane O'Fiel, members of the Floodway Coalition of Houston, won a round in their legal battle with the City of Houston over whether the City's changing of Chapter 19-43 of the City ordinance code, governing floodways, constituted a taking of the O'Fiels' property. Briefly, the City tried to argue to the appeals court that the courts had no say in the matter, something known as arguing a plea to the jurisdiction. What the court told the City was that no, the court denied this plea to the City.
The case was argued in the Texas First District Court of Appeals. In reading the Court's ruling, the City effectively argued that since the O'Fiels had not actually done anything with their property, in other words that they had not applied for any permits, that the O'Fiels had not exhausted the administrative remedies available to them at that time. Ergo, it then followed that the O'Fiels' case was not ripe. The Court did not buy the City's argument.
The Wizard believes that the City was trying to shutdown the case altogether, delaying any legal proceedings for years and trying to wear down the O'Fiels in court. Fortunately the Courts have denied that to the City. The legal proceedings on the Floodway takings issue progress.
More to come.
Wizard
10 minutes ago, a co-worker of mine told me that a man jumped from the parking garage across from the Texaco - Chevron Heritage building here in downtown Houston. I went to the fourth floor and looked out the north window of my building and beheld the scene from a birds eye view. The police have about half the block taped off with yellow tape. Several officers were standing around the body, with some onlookers gathering. I don't have my digital camera with me.
Some contractors who work on our elevators witnessed the guy jump. One wonders what made the man give up all hope on living and go over the edge.
Sigh...
Wizard
One of the arguments that people who believe that Houston must have a zoning ordinance is that zoning will allow them to retain the character and flavor of their neighborhoods. Zoning will allow citizens to keep out McMansions and other inappropriate development, zoning will allow residents to control their own destiny, and zoning will enable the urban planners to use their supposed expertise to guide the destiny of a city.
Well, well, well, if gentle readers fervently believe all of this, then I have a story for you, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune. Better yet, this story is only one of a series of stories that the Tribune has written on the subject of zoning and land use in Chicago. I have yet to make my way through all of the stories, but based on my early readings, they will make for days of entertainment.
Some gentle readers will try to point that the real issue in these stories is that there was a housing bust that resulted from altering the zoning codes, but that is a red herring. The real story is that zoning does not do what zoning advocates say it does. Not only that, but since land use is far more greatly politicized via the enactment of a zoning ordinance, it creates an environment where politicians can extract economic rents, personal favors, and possibly personally get rich via changing ordinances for developers command large campaign contributions for getting elected and releected.
From the story above:
NEIGHBORHOODS FOR SALE: PART 8
House of cards emerges in zoning-change game
TRIBUNE ANALYSIS: Market collapse is aggravated by system where aldermen benefit from campaign donations from developers
Mayor Richard Daley has maintained the tradition of letting aldermen have the final say over what gets built in their wards. Almost half of the zoning changes approved by the council members are done despite opposition from City Hall's own planning staff.
In case after case, aldermen ignored neighbors' complaints as well as planners' warnings that proposed projects would be too dense or would not be consistent with the character of the neighborhoods.
On Harlem Avenue in the 36th Ward, a developer who has given the alderman $3,000 used a zoning change to put up a five-story condo complex despite objections from neighbors. Now the builder is trying to entice potential buyers by offering a year without condo association assessments.
A federal probe that dates to at least 2007 has expanded to include interest in a 2004 letter to Daley from U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago). Gutierrez lobbied the mayor on behalf of a zoning change for a developer who lent him $200,000 for a separate real estate deal. The congressman said he did nothing improper.
So the Congressman didn't do anything improper? Really?
Continued...
The real zoning code in Chicago is unwritten, but developers know it well: Changes in zoning go hand in hand with contributions to aldermanic campaigns.
The investigation found that Chicago is a city where a building boom greased by millions of dollars in political donations to aldermen has remade the face of neighborhoods, changing the feel of the streets where people live and work.
It's a city where aldermen have become dependent on the political contributions they rake in from developers, while routinely ignoring city planners who oppose out-of-scale development.
It's a city where the council rubber stamps aldermen's wishes -- rejecting just 15 requested zoning changes in a decade -- and where almost half the zoning changes were concentrated in 10 of the city's 50 wards that are exploding with growth.
And it's a city where advisory groups that review zoning proposals are sometimes stacked with developers and real estate agents who will profit from the projects.
This practice of "aldermanic prerogative" creates a political spoils system where cash and clout trump the public planning process employed in many other major American cities. The result is a patchwork approach to development, where the fate of any zoning change is decided long before it is ever discussed publicly by the council's Zoning Committee.
The decisions made in ward offices and rubber stamped in City Hall are driving the transformation of Chicago, making neighborhoods unrecognizable to people who have tended their homes and yards there for decades.
Although she's no city planner, Alice Sopala poses the same question planners ask. "Why bother zoning an area if you will totally disregard it whenever the alderman says it's OK?" she said.
...
"Zoning in Chicago is driven by real estate developers," said Ryan, a former New York city planner. "There really isn't any plan in Chicago. You have very few neighborhoods that are safe from overdevelopment."
Of course, one may ask what is meant by the term overdevelopment. Read the rest and weep. One of the benefits of the non-zoned real estate market in Houston is that residents and developers do not have to face the threat of having rents extracted from them from City Council members. One secret that politicians know that the public does not is that there are economies of scale to be reaped from indulging in corruption. Just ask Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
Lastly, as noted in my previous blog posting, my parent's neighborhood in Spring Branch has been undergoing redevelopment over the past 4 years. Nobody there has been complaining about the neighborhood going upscale or complaining that the neighborhood is loosing its character. Meanwhile, the fact that the neighborhood is going upscale means that the City and County are raking in more in property taxes. That is a true marketplace in action.
And by the way, I really am a nice guy, ergo have a Happy New Year!
Wizard
Well, just like nearly everyone else, the Wizard lost some dosh in the recent stock market turmoil. The Wizard has taken a beating, however I have since learned that some people I know have taken a much heavier beating than I have. Life goes on.
Sigh...
However, that isn't the purpose of this epislte. Some weeks ago, I passed through my parent's neighborhood on the way back from a meeting I attended. Over the past few years, the neighborhood in which my parents live in, and where myself and my siblings were raised, has been experiencing a transformation. Nearly 40 years ago, my parents bought into a subdivision that had been built at the beginning of the 1950's. The houses of the area are typical of the era, being 1,200 - 1,500 square feet in size. In recent years, the people who have lived in the subdivision for ages, and whom I grew up with knowing as a boy and as a teenager, have either sold out, moved, or passed on. In otherwords, the neighborhood of my youth is going through a generational shift and is passing on. My parents and some others still live there.
What has resulted is that the newcomers have been buying up the old 1950's housing, doing tear downs, and have building massive new McMansions in their place. What has resulted is a very odd looking neighborhood where you have 50+ year old housing, such as my parents live in, situated right next door to 4,000 foot brand new houses. I am witnessing something that I thought I would never see. The neighborhood of my youth has flipped and is going upscale.
The Wizard has decided to try to capture this moment in time where the old is torn down in favor of the new. I have a few photos of the old houses in the neighborhood, but it seems that I am going to have to rely on Google Maps in order to capture some still images of houses that may be no longer there. I intend to walk around the neighborhood in the next few weeks and snap a bunch of photos of every house in the subdivision as the transition takes place. Then I will publish them at some point in the future. I will call it the project Going Home.
This project will capture the free market of Houston in slow motion action. There is no government agency condemnation involved, no zoning saying that mansions can't be built, or that the housing is somehow designated as a historical district so that the housing can't be torn down. The world changes and life goes on.
Somehow I never thought that the neighborhood of my youth would disappear before my very eyes, but at the same time I am excited to think that the neighborhood I grew up in has its best days yet to come.
Wizard
Well, well, well,
Here I am, sitting in my living room, 8 days after Hurricane Ike paid Houston and Galveston a visit, along with a heavy rain storm that happened the following Sunday morning. Westheimer is largely back to normal, though there are a few neighborhoods in the area without power. I tried making most of my regular commute towards work on this Sunday afternoon. I went into work on Friday, only to find that San Felipe inside the Loop is still blocked off. That left drivers having to traverse around the blocked off area to get to Kirby or other thoroughfares. I just got back from a run in Memorial Park that I took around noon and took San Felipe on my way back home. I found the street is still blocked off, but that the trees that had blocked the right of way had been cleared. Linemen were working from utility trucks to restore power. The Chronicle said on its September 22nd, 2008 front page that 54 percent of Centerpoint Energy customers and 71 percent of Entergy customers had their energy and power restored. Complaints have already mounted on the perceived slow pace of power restoration. Meanwhile, Mayor White's curfew of Houston, modified to be enforced between midnight and 6:00am, was supposed to end tonight but will be extended until further notice. The Wizard imagines the curfew will be lifted by the end of next week.
As is to be expected, the Monday morning quarterbacking about what to do, if anything, in the future with regards to hurricanes has already started. Council member Peter Brown, who never saw a regulation that he didn't like, once again trotted out the Urban Romanticism / Smart Growth playbook item of burying electrical power lines. Interestingly, the Houston Chronicle posted an editorial in the Sunday, September 21, 2008 paper largely rejecting this idea, citing studies from Oklahoma and Virginia that the cost of underground power burial would be between $3,500 - $16,000 per customer. The editorial mentioned that the cost per mile of underground burial was some 10 times those of overhead poles. Nonetheless, there are some cost effective ideas that could be pursued to alleviate the problem, such as passing some regulations or ordinances prohibiting the growth of vegetation or tree cover within a certain distance of power lines.
The same battles are going to erupt over development near the sea shore. Jim Blackburn was quoted saying:
We have to protect people from themselves and certainly from developers," said Jim Blackburn, an environmental attorney and coastal expert based in Houston. "Anyone who wants to buy on the West End of Galveston Island should be shown a picture of the Bolivar Peninsula after Ike.
But that all depends on whether you are the type of person who believes that people need to be protected from themselves, much less from real estate developers.
From a purely economic perspective, as opposed to a political perspective, issues such as having your seaside home wiped out by hurricanes, tsunamis, or other phenomena could be looked at with a similar lens to that of understanding whether we should pursue underground burial of power lines. Ask yourself what is the future discounted probability that a hurricane is going to damage your home or how long it will be before power will be restored? We had some shingles taken off the roofs of my condo complex, along with some damage to car ports, but otherwise I suffered no harm. Likewise, I have had two power outages in the past 2 years, a 36 hour outage from Hurricane Rita and a loss of power for 76 hours from Ike. Before that, we had brief power outages because of Tropical Storm Allison back in 2001. I have a generator already, ergo I am largely covered on the account of a loss of electrical power.
The point here is that the last time Houstonians suffered through an electrical outage of this length and magnitude was 25 years ago from Hurricane Alicia. So ask yourself, does suffering through an occasional power outage call for spending billions to retrofit Houston's 640 square miles of already developed territory and put up with the massive attendant disruptions of civic life? It's one thing to consider burying power lines in new areas that are under development right now when it is relatively cheap and easy to do so. It's another thing to rip up the sidewalks of a street like Westheimer in order to bury the power lines.
A friend of mine owns a house in Galveston that was about 15 feet from the shoreline. His house was some 15 feet up. I have yet to hear from him whether he joined the masses in checking to see whether his home made it through Ike. Nonetheless, it seems to me that if private insurance is willing to pick up the tab on rebuilding a house, and effectively asking the future discounting question I posed above, then I see no reason why someone should be prohibited from rebuilding. Likewise, I've seen people in other countries build their housing on rivers and lakes, knowing that they could lose their homes, but they take the risk anyway because that is how they live. One could build cheap housing with no insurance, taking the risk that the structure would be blown away in the event of a natural disaster. Then the onus would be on the homeowner, who would be faced with picking up the pieces and starting all over again.
It remains to be seen whether the the state will take any action, other than enforcing the Texas Open Beaches Act. No doubt that Ike will open some more wounds over that issue.
Sigh...
Wizard
This is a running blog entry on Hurricane Ike:
1) At 7:52pm September 12th, KHOU-TV channel 11 news reporter Jeremy Desel and another reporter staying at the San Luis Hotel reported that the power at the hotel just went down. The other reporter was more dramatic. From his fourth floor vantage, he said that all of Galveston lost power at once. All he could see was a single police car. The Galveston emergency management center is in Dickenson, ergo they are still operational.
2) Channel 11 news reports 150,000 people have lost power.
3) The Houston Chronicle reporter Eric Berger, "the Sci Guy", reports that Ike is to make landfall at midnight. The winds are starting to gust up in my courtyard.
4) Update 11:00pm. I am watching CNN. A reporter in La Porte says that there are no lights there, but I saw a refinery that is still lit up like the sky. I went outside and found that there were some people in the complex next door having drinks outside. It was a scene of festivities. I left after about 20 minutes. Debris is starting to fall off of trees along our street. I piled them up on the medians. I doubt that some of the palm trees that are planted are going to survive the night.
The rain is starting to come down.
5) 11:35pm. I am surfing the television channels right now, ergo of course I still have power. Texas Governor Rick Perry tells CNBC news that Ike could be a storm that causes $100 billion in damages. Pardon my French, but that is horseshit.
6) 12:35am. The winds have substantially increased. I am watching the Weather Channel. They are showing steady winds in Houston of 45+ miles per hour, with gusts of up to 70 miles per hour. The Weather Channel reporters stated that in Port Arthur, the Port Arthur Fire Department evacuated the town! So much for government to help you when you need it.
7) The Houston Chronicle interactive tracker says that as of 12:00am, Ike is 28.9 north, 94.5 west. Ike is 80 miles away from Houston. Movement is northwest at 12 mph. The storm is to past east of downtown.
8) We just lost power at 12:42am for about one minute, but just got it back.
9) I finally laid down and got some rest around 1:30am. I awoke at 4:45am and found the lights were out. Amazingly, the lights came back on at 6:00am. It is now 6:10am. The lights have gone out twice now since they first came back on. I have air conditioning and all other mod cons, including a working refrigerator.
If this holds for another 3 hours or so, the Wizard just might make it out of Ike with just a flesh wound.
Sunday, September 14: 6:00pm
I am now writing from the Big Evil Company's offices in downtown Houston. Downtown has underground power lines, ergo the lights do not go out here. No, the Wizard did not escape Ike's wrath. We have been without power since yesterday morning.
I received a call from a Big Evil Oil Company manager asking me to render an opinion on a power and cooling related issue. Since the manager could not relay all the facts to me, I decided to make the drive into downtown Houston. Westheimer was okay except for some blocked lanes from trees, but when I got to San Felipe road inside 610 Loop, I found the street was impassable at San Felipe and Larchmont due to fallen trees and power lines that completely blocked the road. I got out of the car to investigate how bad it was and when I got back to my car, I found a Channel 26 Fox News camera crew waiting by my car. They asked me for an interview, which I granted them. I told them this was my normal commute into work everyday and that I would have to find another way to get to work. I told them to let the authorities know that San Felipe was completely blocked and that some crews would be needed to clear the thoroughfare. Too bad probably 100 other streets had the exact same problem. The residents told me that a tornado may have touched down in River Oaks, causing the problem.
I then got onto 610 Loop and tried to get into downtown via Memorial Drive. I was able to snake my way through Memorial Park, through a bunch of debris, but when I got to Shepherd and Memorial, the entire area was under water and I could go no further. Buffalo Bayou was at the edge of reaching people's homes. I then circled up Westcott and then down Washington Avenue, going back down Durham to West Dallas to get into downtown. Along the way, I stopped to take more photos of Allen Parkway and Memorial. Buffalo Bayou was flooded all the way to the street level of Allen Parkway.
I took care of the work assessement, then wandered around downtown taking photographs of the skyscrapers. The Wedge tower had lots of windows broken out, as did the El Paso and Wells Fargo building. The Big Evil Oil Company office buildings were not too badly harmed, but the windows on the skywalks between the parking garages and the buildings were blown out. Water soaked the carpets. Inside the buildings themselves, there was some damage to floors and to common areas. Debris, paper, and insulation was strewn everywhere. Water puddles were on the floors and in the underground tunnel food courts. A window was busted out on several floors including one in the company cafeteria. The data center itself was fine.
As of this writing, some stores are open. The UPS situation has been generally taken care of. The Big Evil Oil Company offices will be closed Monday and Tuesday. I doubt power will be restored for another few days to my abode. Until then, we in Houston merely have to keep our heads up. Mercifully, Ike has brought cooler weather. Until last week it was still in the 90's during the day time. The forecast now it that it will be in the low 80's during the day with a breeze with lows in the 70's. If it weren't for that, my hometown would be unbearable.
Ciao for now.
Wizard
I write this as Hurricane Ike approaches the Houston Galveston area, and which should make landfall sometime in the dark hours tomorrow morning, September 13th, 2008. A Houston Chronicle interactive map shows that Ike is, as I write this, at 27.7 degrees north and 93.5 degrees west, making it some 180 miles away from Houston.
Ike is now projected to pass east of downtown Houston with winds over 100 miles per hour and with a massive storm surge. The Weather Channel now says that Surfside has knee deep water already. Sabine Pass has 36 mph winds, while Galveston now has winds of 41 - 50 mph. We have roughly 25 mph winds in Houston as of 5:20pm today.
I believe that Hurricane Ike will have many of the same effects that Hurricane Alicia had on Houston when she rolled through town 25 years ago. I was on the cusp of entering my last year of high school when Alicia hit. I stayed up all night, alone, in my parents' front room, listening to music via the family stereo through some headphones. Or, I did so until the power went out. I still stayed up and stared out at the darkness right next to the front windows, something in hindsight I would never do again. Sometimes I would see terrific bolts of lightning light up the entire sky. When those struck, I could sometimes see the branches of our trees in the front yard extend all the way to the ground. Those trees are not there anymore, having fallen victim to a curb and gutter improvement project that the City of Houston did when Helen Huey was district council member.
Alicia battered on all night that night, but my parents home suffered no damage of any kind, not to the roof or windows. The winds finally began to calm down around 6:00am that following Friday morning. My father awoke and the winds had quieted down enough to where I felt adventurous enough to walk outside into our back yard. There was a patio in the back yard, but when I opened the door I could see that there was debris everywhere. I was about to step out when my dad told me not to do that. That turned out to be some wise advice, as we subsequently discovered that we had a downed power line lying in the patio. Houston Lighting and Power employees came by later that day to deal with the downed line, but we did not get our power restored until 2 days later. That turned out to be a minor nightmare as this left us without air conditioning in Houston during August. That will be the one saving grace of Ike. The forecasts say that we will have temperature highs in the 80's next week and lows in the 60's and 70's. We will be spared having to sweat like pigs even if we lose power.
But I digress. I was allowed to go outside in the front yard in mid-morning. All of the residents in the neighborhood congregated together, it is rather amazing how natural disasters get people to do that. About one in five of the homes in my parents neighborhood suffered some form of damage, mostly trees that had fallen on roofs. Several people had garages that had been struck. People came out with chainsaws and started to chip away at clearing away some of those trees. Debris was everywhere.
My dad told me to start cleaning up the front yard the next day. It took over 30 trash bags in order hold all of the pine tree branches and needles that had fallen over the yard. I feel sad that I did not have a camera to record Alicia like I do now. I don't know whether businesses boarded up, like they have on Westheimer now.
But there are some things I do vividly remember about the aftermath of Alicia. People piled up their debris on the medians of many major collector and arterial streets, like Westview in Spring Branch or Richmond near Gessner. The City did not finish collecting it all until months afterwards.
Another vivid memory I have was looking at the front page of the papers the next day and seeing photos of shards of glass that had popped out of downtown skyscraper windows that were stuck vertically into the concrete! I now work downtown. When Rita struck in 2005, I warned fellow employees that this might happen again, but it will happen when Ike strikes tomorrow.
That winter, some friends of mine and I went out in the dead of a very cold December night on a trip to Galveston beach. We were young and absolutely nuts for doing that. It was freezing cold that night, but we were lubricated by lots of beer. We walked for hours and talked about what our futures would be like. One thing I couldn't help but notice was that the beach was entirely barren. It seemed that the sand dunes had been pushed back dozens of yards.
Things are starting to get interesting, but the real fireworks have yet to come. There is a construction crane down Westheimer that I am a bit concerned about, but otherwise the Wizard is up on the second floor. No flooding for me, but I am worried about the wind and the trees in our courtyard. All but one of my windows are boarded up, the one that isn't being too large to be covered by plywood. It's funny because when Alicia hit, nobody took off and left town. Since Katrina hit New Orleans three years ago, it seems that millions take off every time anything comes remotely close to town.
Otherwise, the Wizard is hunkered down with some supplies to last for maybe three days. The Big Evil Company Linux clusters are shutdown with no restart until Sunday. I'll check in on the kinfolk and some other friends in a while. It's time for Ike to let her rip.
Wizard
In the August 7th, 2008 edition of Houston's newspaper of note, Leslie Casimir wrote the story of how it takes Houstonians Pablo Camarillo and 72 year old Margaret Jenkins hours of their precious time during their busy days in order for them to get to work. The Chronicle included an online map showing Mrs. Jenkins' torturous daily commute to her home off of Airport Boulevard on Houston's south side to her job on South Loop West.
Mrs. Jenkins' daily commute, the Chronicle reported, takes an estimated 83 minutes. The Wizard decided to punch in Mrs. Jenkins' home and work locations on Google Maps, using the terms 3300 Airport Blvd and 2616 South Loop as the two end locations in order to determine the distance between her home and job. Google Maps reported that the fastest trip was what I expected. Simply take Airport Blvd in a west bound direction until you hit 288, then turn north on 288. When you reach the intersection of 288 and South Loop, turn west and around. The distance is six miles and Google Maps estimates that the trip takes 9 minutes, right in line with what Mrs. Jenkins says in the story. She says the trip by car takes 10 minutes.
Clearly the story generated a firestorm of comments on the Chronicle's website. Tory writes about the issue here. Tory asks whether we have our big government transit monopoly priorities straight?
The Wizard believes that there may be an answer to Mrs. Jenkins' and Mr. Camarillo's dilemma that doesn't involve having a monopolistic government transit agency spend $100 million or more per mile on rail lines, not that any of Metro's proposed rail lines would not help either Mr. Camarillo or Mrs. Jenkins get to their jobs since they won't run where they need to go anyway. That solution involves loosening up the City of Houston ordinances governing the operations of jitneys.
Jitneys are a form of transportation that are widely used in poorer countries, in places that don't have billions of taxpayer dollars to fund grandiose transit monuments. The Wizard has taken jitney trips in several countries, including the Philippines (where they are called Jeepney's), and in Thailand. Steven Baron extensively discussed the use of jitneys in Houston in his book Houston Electric. In that book, Baron notes that Houston City Council outlawed the operation of jitneys in 1924, at which they had captured nearly 25 percent of the passenger market in Houston. However at the 2008 American Dream Coalition conference in Houston last May, I heard Alfredo Santos tell of his story where he started operating a jitney illegally. HPRA President and public activist Barry Klein helped Mr. Santos get legal help, which eventually led to the overturning of the jitney ordinance some years ago and their legalization.
So why aren't jitneys more widely used in Houston? Well, whenever something is legal but rarely used, the Wizard immediately starts suspecting government interference and sure enough, if one decides to pay a visit to the City of Houston ordinances governing the operation of jitneys (Chapter 46, Article VI), one immediately notices some very serious regulatory barriers to entry that would be jitney operators face in entering the competitive field for transportation. Notably:
1) A vehicle used for jitney operations cannot be more than five years old! So, my 19 year old Honda which has over 180,000 miles on it, and which could continue to be safely operated for years to come could not be used as a jitney vehicle.
Imagine if Metro was told that their $500,000 buses, which are usually designed to last for roughly 12 years and 500,000 miles of operation, could not by law be allowed to operate for more than five years? Imagine if Metro's $3.2 million rail cars, which usually last for some 30-35 years with some overhauls, could not be allowed to operate for more than five years? The public would go completely bananas.
2) Jitney vehicle operators must submit an operating plan to the City, including a fixed route and fares. Jitney operators are not allowed to travel elsewhere unless they submit a new route to the City. That means that jitney operators and would be passengers are not allowed to negotiate fares, something that is standard practice in other countries.
It also means that jitney operators cannot fully utilize the full flexibility of their vehicles by servicing an entire area of town and potentially capturing more customers with door to door service. I've been on a number of bus and jitney trips abroad where vehicle operators stopped off on the side of the road or wandered off course on behalf of some passengers. Imagine if a Domino's Pizza franchisee opens a store in your area of town with intentions of servicing a 4 mile radius area around the store, but then is told by the City that they can only service homes or businesses that are on a handful of streets and nowhere else. How many Domino's stores would now be in existence?
3) Jitney operators face bonding and insurance requirements that Metro does not. Under the Texas Tort Claims Act, your life is only worth $100,000 if you suffer injury or death while involved with any kind of accident with a Metro vehicle. It should be obvious to everyone that jitney operators don't enjoy such governmental immunity.
There are more, but no doubt that the usual rationale would be offered as to why these regulations are in place and that is that we need to protect the public. It should be equally obvious to everyone that this ordinance doesn't protect the public from anything, but was instead written to protect Yellow Cab and Metro from market competition, not to help the citizens of Houston get around more quickly or conveniently.
Jitneys also present another problem, this one in the political marketplace. Jitneys don't allow politicians to spend billions of dollars in cost overruns on big transportation make work projects, they don't allow for photo opportunities or to put their names into the history books, nor do they help politicians obtain millions in campaign contributions. They also would drive lovers of government transit berserk. However by lifting lifting the regulatory barriers to entry to jitney operations, the City just might allow a solution to come forward which could allow Mrs. Jenkins to get to her job in 10 minutes and to succeed where taxpayer funded public transit fails.
Are you a class warfare type who is worried that Mrs. Jenkins might have to pay $10 for her twelve mile round trip back and forth to work everyday? Good! All that goes to show is that you don't know how much Mrs. Jenkins values her time. Who knows? She just might be willing to pay that kind of money so that she can get 2 hours and 20 minutes of her day back. Who knows, maybe a friendly jitney operator may decide to cut a deal and price discriminate for her so that she could get a round trip for $5 per day, but we won't know unless City regulations are loosened up.
Next, I write about having lunch with Bill King.
Wizard
On June 17, 2008, National Public Radio picked up on a property rights battle, previously covered by the Wall Street Journal, involving a friend of the Wizard named Brooks Porter. Brooks, along with his wife Merry, own a beach front property in Surfside Texas, near Freeport, which they have held for 25 years.
As the NPR story relates, the Porters purchased the house as a rental and occasional weekend beach house. The problem is that over the past 25 years, the Gulf of Mexico has eroded the local beach heads dozens of feet, sweeping grasses and dunes with it. The Porters, along with some other locals, now have housing that sits just yards away from the shoreline. That in turn puts them on the beach which is in violation of the Texas Open Beaches Act, which states that the beach is effectively a park.
Brooks told me a while back that the problem is that the beach erosion is not entirely a natural phenomenon, due to acts from the Army Corps of Engineers and other entities. He and the wife intend to stay put.
As the NPR story correctly concludes, this is a big looming problem. To quote NPR:
How this case gets resolved could set a precedent far beyond Texas. What if rising seas threaten one day to swamp skyscrapers in Manhattan or entire towns in Florida? Whose responsibility will it be to move buildings out of the way? Who will take the hit for the lost property value?
Mr. and Mrs. Porter have fought this battle for 10 years now. Stay tuned.
Sigh...
Wizard.
This past week, several members of Houston City Council voted to tag revisions to Chapter 19 of the City of Houston's ordinances, which deal with flooding and development in floodplains and floodways. The story came out that several members of council were given short notice on what those changes would be before being asked to vote on them.
The Wizard has been counseling the Floodway Coalition in this property rights battle. I've spoken to some influential people about the matter, and was responsible for giving them some ideas which they have put into practice. Recently, I learned that Council members have seen those signs. I will leave it at that.
And so it was that in the past six weeks, an amazing turn around has come to pass where Council members have in fact come to officially revisit the issue. I have helped go over the revised Chapter 19 ordinances. The Wizard finds himself both puzzled as to why the Mayor is wanting to cement the ordinance revisions quickly, and strongly believing that a vote on this ordinance should be delayed, if for just a short time. The whole matter would not be so bad if Council were only revisiting Chapter 19-43 (the floodway ordinance itself), but the problem is that parts throughout the entire ordinance have been revised, which makes going over the volume of material and making sense of it all a vastly more complicated task. I've spent some 10-15 hours going over the ordinance and there are probably 2-3 pages of questions that I have come up with, much less what other interested parties will spot.
Without going into much detail, there is some language that probably does not need to be in the ordinance. Because of the volume of revisions, I have some doubts that busy, term limited Council members may not fully catch all of the revisions of what is now on offer. The ordinance could still have some unforeseen consequences, which is what the initial changes voted on in 2006 caused, and which are at the root of what started the controversy to begin with. Council members really should listen to what the people who have been the most active and have become far and away going the most educated citizens in this city over the past two years have to say on this issue. To Council's credit, they have stated that they are waiting for a response and the Wizard helped FCOH thrash through the revised ordinance to help put together that response.
I should say here though that the experience of having gone over the proposed revision of the ordinance has given the Wizard a new appreciation of how much effort it takes to get some hopefully decent legislation passed into law.
Credit must be given to Council and the Mayor, which did the right thing and took out the most destructive aspects of the current ordinance which were at the heart of the fight, including the 50 percent substantial damage clause, the no build provision on vacant land in the floodway, and some other onerous regulatory burdens that were laid on improved land with currently existing structures.
What is good is that we were given some time to look over the ordinance and come up with recommendations on changes. The Floodway Coalition probably will not get everything they want, but it seems clear to the Wizard that Mayor White finally realized that the issue was not going to go away and wants to settle the issue - equitably for all parties involved - once and for all.
Wizard
Recently, it came out that Harris County Metro was promoting a nation wide effort for Americans to use public transportation. I was not aware of this, but I did find out about it via BlogHouston.
Unlike 95-96 percent of Houstonians - and probably nearly all of the loudest promoters of public transportation in this City - the Wizard actually decided to take the bus from home to work this past Friday. In reality, I had been thinking of doing this for about two weeks. I've been doing some research, collecting data on transit speeds on various bus routes, wait times, and so forth. What I have been doing when I go on bus trips is that I write down how long it took for me to access the transit stop, the time I get on the bus, record all stops, the amount of time the bus stops, and time of arrival when I get to where I am going.
Without going into a blow by blow account of my trip on Friday, here is an overview of my trip to work and back home. I live about 9 miles from downtown and happen to have a bus stop at the corner of Westheimer and the street I live at. Of course, when it comes to public transportation, all roads really do lead to downtown, ergo if one does not have a job in downtown like I do, and some 93 percent of people who live in Harris County do not, then the possibilities of transit working for anyone in an urban area diminish substantially.
Here are the general details of what happened.
Going to work
1) I walk out my front door at 7:17:50 am. The bus stop is about 2/10th's of a mile away from where I live. I reach the bus stop at 7:21:12 am, so my walk to the bus stop has taken me 3 minutes and 22 seconds. I see a Metro bus at the next light, but it is not the route I want to take. As it is, that route will also get me to work and might have gotten there as fast as, or faster, than the route I took today. As it is, I let the #53 go by and wait for the #82.
2) The #82 arrives at 7:27:10am. As I get onboard and waive my Metro Q-Card, I keep thinking to myself that I could be nearly half way to work by now if I had taken my car. I also think that I am paying $2 for a round trip today, whereas my cost of gas is about $3. As for the opportunity cost of my time, well gentle readers, that is another story...
3) The #82 is standing room only, so I stand for the first two miles until we get to the Galleria. Most are minorities and working class people. I am the only one dressed in slacks and shirt. There, several people get off and I sit down.
4) At 7:37:05 am, we cross 610 Loop. I would have been reaching my workplace by now in my car.
5) At 7:44:49am, we reach Lamar High School and St. John's private school. There to my surprise, seven students get off the bus and start walking towards Lamar High School. I have seen Lamar students get on the bus in the afternoon, but somehow didn't expect this in the morning.
6) At 7:57:20am, we pass Numbers night club. At 7:59:15am, we reach Louisiana and turn left towards downtown. On the way, I see Houston Police pointing speed guns at drivers along Louisiana. We reach Polk at 8:04:10am. My walk to the office is seven minutes.
Results: My overall trip time door to door was 54 minutes, which is what I was generally expecting. That means my car saves me about 50-60 minutes per day in a round trip.
The actual time in transit was 37 minutes. There were a total of 37 bus stops made, which took a grand total of approximately 602 seconds (ten minutes and two seconds). That works out to an average stop time of 16.27 seconds per stop, but some stops were substantially longer than that. The stop for the light at Kirby and Westheimer, for example took, 62 seconds. If I had taken the #53 instead, I may have gotten to work faster.
The average stop time for the #82 is actually less than for some other bus routes I have taken. For example, for the #15 Fulton bus route, I discovered that the average stop time was about 21 seconds per stop. I did this while doing research in response to the public comment period for the North Corridor rail transit line.
The average speed of my entire trip was 10 miles per hour, if you count walk time and wait times. If you count only time in transit, the speed of the bus was approximately 14 miles per hour. That also happens to be the average speed of travel of the Main Street rail line.
My trip home
1) I left my job Friday evening at 5:55pm. I reached a covered bus stop on Smith at 5:58pm and wait. It rained on Friday. That reminded me that 30 years after being voted into existence, a large percentage of Metro's bus stops still do not have covered shelters at them. The #53 has a bus at the light, but I was on the other side of the street and traffic was steady. Once again, I let the #53 go and decide to take the #82 home.
2) 6:02:10pm, board the next #82 bus. The bus currently has about 15 passengers, including 2-3 professional types. I later discover the professional types all get off at Wesleyan. The bus starts in transit at 6:03:06pm.
3) 6:12:00pm. The bus turns onto Elgin, which of course turns into Westheimer. This time many more people get on and off at random stops and there are several people who request bus stops along the route. I have been finding that Metro buses stop an average of about once every quarter mile. In contrast, the planned light rail lines will have a stop roughly every three fourths of a mile to one mile. I suspect that travel speeds would be faster for a bus than a train if Metro were to run supplemental limited stop buses along the proposed rail lines that were to stop as infrequently as trains do.
While I sit on this trip writing down my times, I found myself occasionally staring out the window and starting to dwell on the thought of public transportation being an amenity of an urban area. Maybe it was the fact of actually being on a bus and taking it to work which concentrated my mind on this matter, rather than writing abstractly from an analytical view. Amenities of all kinds have costs related in producing them. The key is to minimize amenity costs in order to achieve results, especially if you are using public monies for the amenity. Otherwise you wind up with sunk costs and ultimately tax increases in order to pay for the amenity. It should be noted that for the first 22 years of the agency's existence, Metro - incredibly for a government transit agency - never got into financial trouble. Transit agencies that only run buses never do. Once a transit agency crosses that line and starts building big rail networks, the thoughts and worries about where are we going to get more money never quit. Since the rail line was built and talk started of building rail lines in all directions, there has been nothing but talk on how are we going to pay for this. Get used to that.
The increased costs of fuel for Metro from the $1.83 per gallon contract they signed five years ago to updated market prices will cost some $30 million per year, which amounts to increasing the system wide subsidy costs to carry patrons by bus by about 6 cents per passenger mile. In contrast, building the rail line for the North Corridor will result in spending about $3.50 - $4 per passenger mile to attract a new transit rider using light rail as your means of doing so.
And no gentle readers, there is no fuzzy math in that statement. I did not say that the cost would be $4 per gallon of fuel, I said the social costs are about $3.50 - $4 per passenger mile to attract a new rider to transit using light rail as your means of doing it. I arrived at that calculation assuming each and every new rail boarding would result in a five mile trip (which is about the average distance a transit rider travels when taking public transportation), using Metro's own stated forecasts (Metro states that the corridor has 19,000 bus boardings now and will have 29,000 boardings after rail is built), their own cost estimates ($677 million), and the FTA's own mandated cost structures to arrive at that figure. Furthermore, Metro says 55 percent of the riders for the North Corridor alignment will be bus riders arriving at train stop via bus, so instead of getting to take a bus straight into downtown, they will have to probably transfer to the rail line in order to complete their trip.
Imagine having a four seat sedan as your car and that you pick up three of your co-workers to go back and forth to work, driving 10 miles back and forth, or about 5,000 miles per year in the process. Now imagine having to trade up to a five seat Lexus type minivan because another co-worker who happens to live nearby (say a mile away) wants to join your car pool. Then imagine the cost of making that switch would cost you an additional $17,500 - $20,000 per year over and above your current transportation costs. That's what we are getting into when we trade up now from buses to light rail. So would you make that switch and buy that minivan, or would you consider trying to do something cheaper, or do nothing at all? If your answer is yes you would buy that minivan, then that also is what Metro, the Houston Chronicle, and the rail constituency want to do.
Note that none of these figures incorporate losses to patronage from bus routes which have had their routes truncated, rerouted, or eliminated in an effort to accomodate the demands that rail will place on the agency. Metro lost some 23,000 - 25,000 boardings on the 16 main bus routes that intersect the Main Street rail line after the line was built. Expect more of this if the other five rail lines get built. Once again, all we are doing is trading up, and what an expensive trade up that is.
Proper pricing of amenities via using private markets for transportation, which is what actors in the free market and private sector would have to do in order to survive, would cut all of this out. That in turn would allow us to get rid of this notion that everyone should live at the expense of everyone else.
4) The bus reaches 610 Loop at 6:34:40pm and reaches the Galleria 1 minute later. When it does, 14 people get off the bus.
5) I get off the bus at 6:48:40pm. It takes me 90 seconds to cross Westheimer because I don't have the green light when I get off the bus. I get to my front door at 6:54:05pm.
Results: The overall time from door to door is 59 minutes and 5 seconds. The actual time in transit was 45 minutes and 34 seconds, reflecting heavier traffic. There were 38 stops made on the way home. The time spent at stops was 816 seconds, or 13 minutes and 36 seconds. The average time spent at stops was 21.5 seconds.
The average speed of my trip home, door to door, was 9 miles per hour, if you count walk time and wait times. If you count only time in transit, the speed of the bus was approximately 12 miles per hour. I have so far found on traveling four different bus routes that the average travel speed of a Metro bus in transit is some 12-14 miles per hour. If Metro were to introduce a Rapid Bus or Signature bus line down Westheimer, that would eliminate about 75 percent of the bus stops along my bus route and cut the time in transit down by somewhere around 7.5 - 10 minutes in each direction.
One of the things I wrote in my reply to the North Corridor Supplemental Final Environmental Impact Statement was that simply running a bus straight to Northline Mall with the same number of stops as the planned rail line would take approximately 19 minutes. That almost certainly matches the speed of the proposed rail line which would have its own dedicated lane verses a bus which now has to operate in mixed traffic; ergo there would be little or no travel savings to be reaped by spending all that money by building a rail line. What's worse is that Metro plans to cut off road lanes along Fulton (and has floated the idea of doing that to Richmond Avenue), which will cause greater traffic congestion along the route.
One other thought went through my head. The cost of building an at grade light rail line from my home to work would probably cost at least $1,200,000,000, if not far more. It would involve widening and acquiring property along all of Westheimer. Even worse, a rail line traveling 15 miles per hour in transit would have only saved me time on my work trip home. It would have traveled at the same speed on my way in.
Enough for now. I will be going to a visitation this evening for a young colleague who unexpected was taken by a sudden illness. It is a reminder of how cruel life can be. My ADC stories will resume next week.
Wizard.
I had the week off from the day job a couple of weeks ago and took the opportunity to attended an April 9, 2008 TexITE luncheon where Councilman Peter Brown was the featured speaker. And it was a speech to remember.
Mr. Brown started off by saying that he has been a member of the ITE since 1995, when he mentioned that some of its members had started getting caught up in New Urbanism. He stated that he has worked in some 25 states with master planned developments and 130,000 units.
He stated emphatically that he represents the City of Houston. He insisted that the Houston metropolitan area needed a "strong central city", but as have so many other speakers who have made this claim, I should note that he failed to explicitly explain why is it necessary to have one. What's so special about a particular municipality when both homeowners and businesses are footloose?
Mr. Brown stated that the efficiency and character of the built environment must go together. He also said that Houston must become a Sustainable City. For those of you that need some help reading between the lines, this means that Houston must have urban consolidation, despite the fact that Houston has been gaining density at a rate of about 500 people per square mile per decade since circa 1990. In this encoded language, this means that we must have more compact development, use less energy, meaning that we have to get away from autos and use public transportation regardless of its decline in use. In other words, it's no longer the City's job to merely provide police protection, fire suppression, or other services. It is now the City's job to compel you to cut down on how much energy you use regardless of your own habits or desires.
There is now a new Council committee called the Committee of Sustainable Growth. Of course, Mr. Brown is the chair of this committee and I would not doubt that some of his "Smart Growth" friends are advising him.
Mr. Brown says that we recycle only 7 percent of our waste, while Seattle recycles much more. He forgot to mention that recycling was one of those fads that started in the 1980's, but municipalities everywhere quickly discovered that recycling was largely a money waster. In fact the City of Houston, which started a recycling plan under former Mayor Kathy Whitmire, has tried on a number of occasions over the past 15-20 years to get out of the recycling business because it was consuming taxpayer dollars. However, recycling is politically popular, ergo the City continues to waste taxpayer dollars doing it because the taxpayers like wasting their taxpayer dollars this way.
Read this post as to why recycling is often a money waster:
Well one of the reasons they want you to take your recyclables to a depository is because curbside recycling is extremely energy inefficient. And seriously money losing in most places unless landfill fees are exorbitant like in NY, CA or Seattle. I think in SanFran you have to sort your recyclables. In Texas, Austin has a weekly curbside program which loses money. In Houston we have a biweekly curbside pickup which loses money, and is only available in the closer in more dense areas, maybe 1/3 of the city area. The trucks squander so much fuel that the money from selling recyclables doesn't pay for fuel costs. This is even worse in lower population density cities like Nashville and 'burbs because of the distance between pickups. Houston was losing intolerable money from this when it was weekly, so they changed to biweekly. Unless you're in an area where land for landfills is extremely tight, and pop. density is high like in major cities on the coasts, curbside recycling is window dressing, a "feel good" solution causing more waste than saving. It's not a matter of Nashville being behind San Jose at all, just reasonable economics for the local situation. The political entities there are saying to you to combine a trip to the store with a trip to the depository and save fuel. I do this with glass since Houston does not take glass at the curbside.
Mr. Brown informed the audience that the City of Houston now has a comprehensive mobility plan and a comprehensive drainage plan in place. A "Green Building Code" will be getting adopted, though he did not go into details of its contents. There are definitive plans for Interconnected Green Belts and flood control plans. At the same time, CM Brown lamented that the City has no source of money for flood control.
Mr. Brown is convinced that new resources for transportation infrastructure funding will be available at the federal level. He reemphasized that Houston needs a plan.
Mr. Brown supports the Texas Triangle Bullet Train connecting DFW, Austin & San Antonio, and Houston. He says that costs will be $21 billion, a figure I'll believe when I see it. He said that Southwest Airlines is probably dropping their opposition to such a plan because there is no money to be made on short haul air traffic. As was to be expected, Mr. Brown emphatically supports dramatically increased light rail and commuter rail expansions. Of course he would because he will be dead before he has to ask taxpayers to bail out Metro when the cost overruns come and bus service goes to pot to continue rail service. All this for a form of transportation that will probably never achieve more than 10-15 percent of work trips no matter how high the price of fuel becomes.
One item I should interject here about a Texas triangle train. One needs to remember that such a scheme will only be built within the boundaries of Texas. As such, people should not expect that a financially strapped federal government, which will be feeling the full brunt of the baby boomer entitlement burden coming within the next decade, to fund such a scheme simply because you are asking that 49 other states fund it without getting anything in return. It will need to be done either privately or be done from the confines of the Texas Legislature.
CM Brown says Dallas is 10-15 years ahead of Houston when it comes to rail, but he failed to mention that rail has done nothing to improve traffic congestion, which is as bad as Houston's. He also didn't talk about the recent massive escalations in rail costs which have sent shockwaves throughout the Dallas political classes and have driven Dallas's rail expansions into the ditch. He said Houstonians will not tolerate eminent domain for new roads. That's good to know because if we are going to have the much ballyhooed 3.5 million new residents show up by 2035, then we will probably have another 2 million or more vehicles on our roads.
Mr. Brown says that Houston must be pro-growth and development, as only 15 percent of new area population and 23 percent of new area jobs are landing in Houston proper, as the people and jobs are going outside city limits. Strangely, moments later he proclaimed that "there is a great migration where people are moving back to the central city". The creative classes want an exciting, vibrant lifestyle and we need to improve the "Quality of Place". I suppose that we are to have no more of those quiet, boring, suburban bedroom communities with good schools and lots of open space which might attract new residents.
Mr. Brown said we have reactive and complaint driven government, where for example a developer says they need a pair of lanes for their new development in order to make it work. This is not efficient, Mr. Brown proclaimed. Instead, "we need to do things like figure out where the high density development is supposed to go". Mr. Brown didn't mention the idea that developers might be the ones whose job it is to figure out where high density development might go, nor did Mr. Brown go into details as to why a developer might need a pair of road lanes to get their new developments to work.
Transportation planning: Area planning will require overlaying TX-DOT's plans, TIRZ maps, and the city's plans. Houston will soon have a classification of city streets, which he says have led to "insipid neighborhood layouts", though Mr. Brown did not go into detail as to what constituted insipid neighborhood layouts. Mr. Brown is not happy with current transportation modeling at H-GAC, claiming it is primitive. Other cities have "much more advanced" modeling.
Mr. Brown then said a major goal of Houston's comprehensive mobility plan is to substantially reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled ! He said Houstonians spend $12,000 per year in auto expenses. He derided that Houston is a cheap city to live, saying that despite cheap housing costs, Houston is very expensive, partly because taxes are high. There is a trade off between housing and transportation costs. "We need to find a balance", presumably through even more planning. Major Thoroughfares are to be rationalized, efficient, and neat. Mr. Brown did not go into any further details as to what the City was going to do to compel its citizens to not travel so many miles, regardless of what their means or travel desires were.
Mr. Brown has traffic calming on his agenda, as well as road dieting. In case you need translations of these terms, these are part and parcel of the Smart Growth agenda, terms which mean that roads need to have lots of money spent putting various barriers in the way for pedestrians, which in turn cut down on vehicle speeds and mobility. Road dieting means cutting down on road lane miles and redeploying them for bikes and walking. In other words, Mr. Brown wants to make Houston more automobile hostile, build up traffic congestion, and make it slower and more difficult to get around so that people will walk more. In other words, this means making Houston look like London.
If you need a clarification of what "road dieting is", imagine this. Westheimer inside 610 Loop is mostly two lanes in both directions with no medians. Now then, imagine taking the outer 5 feet off of the outer two lanes and redeploying them for (seldom used) bike paths. That wipes away one full lane off the street configuration. Then with the remaining three lanes, use the center lane as a turn lane and put an occasional pedestrian island on it. This leaves us with only one full lane for vehicle traffic in either direction.
Don't laugh. I went to a Metro meeting some months ago on the Wheeler / Richmond rail alignment where Metro is looking at allowing only one lane of traffic to operate in either direction during off peak time travel hours. All this in the name of "promoting a pedestrian realm".
Here are just a few of hundreds of photos I took of London when I was there in 2007:
1) This photo shows a 300+ year old neighborhood where there is only on street parking and which only has one lane for cars.
2) This photo is a window ad at a real estate firm where two apartment flats are for sale. The first is for $1,850,000 and the second is for $1,500,000.
3) This apartment was going for $850 per week. The apartment below was going for $800 per week, which is about the average apartment rent in London right now.
The difference between carrying a 30 year $150,000 mortgage at 6 percent in Houston and a $600,000 mortgage in London (the average price of a home in London is about 300,000 pounds) is $32,400 per year, enough to purchase and maintain 5-6 cars per household. My colleague whom I went to London to backfill for is a Scotsman who lives in Aberdeen. He cannot afford to move to London because the UK government takes too much of his salary away in taxes and the City is too expensive for him, his wife, and their 3 kids, even though he is probably making $100,000 per year and would be living in a national capital which has a legendary public transportation system which is heavily subsidized.
Mr. Brown says that Dallas has a comprehensive development plan, but strangely, in order to come up with this new plan, they had to do away with antiquated zoning which was getting in the way of the new plan. Mr. Brown didn't mention stories like this or this when talking about Dallas's latest plans.
Houston does not do fiscal impacts on development says Mr. Brown. People are fed up with taxes and we need to promote development. My take on these remarks is that these studies are often used to justify whether "development pays for itself", presumably meaning that if a developer spots a market for single family homes somewhere and wants to build them, the City could then stop this development on some theoretical grounds that the infrastructure will be too costly to implement and that the development will not contribute enough tax monies to justify planners permitting its construction. In other words, such grounds could be used to deny where people live, where development is located, what type of development it is, and its attendant satisfaction of market participants on the grounds that this development is somehow detrimental to municipal finance of all things. In other words, such a device could be used to hinder development, if that development is presumed to be of the kind that is somehow not to be desired.
The questions started: One engineer who had spent his entire career in traffic engineering, talked abaout the traffic and transportation department, which was dissolved in the 1990's, but is now in PW&E and part of a giant bureaucracy. Gonzalo Camacho was also there. He said that 30 percent of early morning rush hour traffic is school traffic. People move to the suburbs for better schools and cheap housing.
Mr. Brown's response: "We need a Marshall Plan for schools and health care!" Great - yet another plan. That must have been the twentieth time Mr. Brown used the word plan in his talk. He lamented that the City spent lots of money in the Clinton Park area to revive it and make it desirable to live there, but then HISD closed the elementary school so parents won't want to live anywhere near there. Of course the answer to this planning error requires yet more coordination and even more planning so that these mistakes don't get made again.
So there you have it. Mr. Brown fully intends to implement the entire tool set of "Smart Growth" policies to make Houston more congested, full of green belts, with lots of planners doing lots of comprehensive planning which will probably make your life as a Houstonian more expensive and inconvenient. Rising costs will also drive more people out to the urban fringe, regardless of what people's attitudes are towards accomodating new growth. Rising housing costs may stem from an increasingly inelastic and unresponsive housing market, as well as pouring more resources into expensive rail transit projects which are far away from where most people live and work, and do not go where people want to go.
And so it was. This is the City that Peter Brown and his friends want to have. I drove home to put some cotton swabs in my ears to stop the bleeding and started writing. Tomorrow's another day.
Sigh...
Wizard
In an act that borders on serendipity, KHOU-TV's Jeremy Diesel ran a story the day before tax day on the City of Houston's Floodway Ordinance. Diesel's story can be read here.
Amongst the property rights disasters include the loss of $38 - $70 million per year in tax revenues. O'Connor and Associates pegs the City's property regulatory takings at $1.9 - $3.5 billion. Diesel says that the loss to Houston could be bigger than the entire tax base of any city in Harris County except Pasadena.
The Wizard first told this story back in June 2007. It only took Houston's paper of note four months to catch up on the story.
The Wizard spoke to Pat O'Connor and told him that information in real estate markets on the effects of the Floodway Ordinance changes were not well known because the City of Houston made this ordinance change in secret. And one wonders why - pray tell - would the City do that? This is alluded to in the report published by KHOU-TV and which can be read here.
Look for the Floodway Coalition's Nancy Wilcox to speak at the upcoming American Dream Coalition conference on May 17, 2008. The Wizard knows that lawsuits are pending...
Wizard
Well, well, well. Yet another city has succumbed to the comprehensive planning rage, this one fortunately is our rival City up I-45. In response, I will merely leave gentle readers with this story from the Dallas Morning News. Amongst the exerpts:
The Cityville apartments just east of Parkland Hospital offer more than 260 new rental units in a row of brightly colored buildings.
One look at the parking garage shows that the apartments have leased well.
But so far, not much is going on with the ground-floor retail space. Only one space, containing a small sandwich shop, is occupied in the 42,000-square-foot strip along Medical District Drive.
snip
Such mixed-use developments with shops and apartments are all the rage with developers.
Although the apartments have been a hit, somebody forgot to check with the shopkeepers.
snip
Often it's not the developer but city officials who want to include shops in apartment complexes.
snip
"We are really seeing the city planning departments pushing for those types of projects," Mr. Willett said.
"It's a good idea to have multiple uses with a property," he said. "But you still have to have the critical mass and population density to support it."
snip
"There are areas that deserve urbanization and areas that don't," Mr. Ashmore said. "This romantic notion of creating all these mixed-use villages all over the city still comes down to demand."
One wonders whether some of these developers will try to fob off their failures on the taxpayers.
So what is the Wizard's solution? It should be a requirement that planners, City officials, and other interest groups who push to create these failures should be required to pay for those failures out of their own pocket books.
Wizard
This past week, the FTA issued letters to one, Mr. Frank Wilson, CEO of Harris County Metro, informing him that the FTA has moved the North Corridor and Southeast light rail alignments back into preliminary engineering status for fiscal year 2009. Of note, Metro stated in its FEIS for the Southeast alignment (see page 50 of this document) that a light rail component would cost $329 million (2006 dollars). The FTA PE approval letter now states, two years later, that the updated cost estimate is up to $663 million for the alignment. As for the North Corridor alignment, the FEIS for it stated that the North Corridor would cost $354 million (see page 50) in 2006 dollars. The FTA letter now states that the alignment will cost $677 million in year of expenditure dollars. The FTA administrator and outside auditor wrote in the accompanying report that Metro's estimated annual increases of 3.25 percent were optimistic because of volatility in commodities markets, uncertain scope of the project, and items like utility relocations. In other words, the cost of these two alignments has gone from $682 million to $1.34 billion in inflationary dollars, a rise of 96 percent. If you factor in inflation, the project's cost rise is about 63 percent and the outside auditor says these numbers are optimistic.
Folks, the word is now official. This 30 mile of the Metro Solutions Phase 2 expansion will cost over $4 billion - which I had predicted 4 months ago - and Metro will go bankrupt ponying up a mere one third of that money. Houston Chronicle transportation beat writer Rad Sallee wrote on March 28, 2008 that there is a problem with the Harrisburg rail alignment crisscrossing Union Pacific rail tracks. No problem if the money can be found to build an overpass. With the cost escalations however, this means that the 4 mile, 4 stop Harrisburg rail alignment will cost $500 - $600 million and will presumably be replacing a local bus route with many more stops. It will only cover a short stretch of the #50 Harrisburg bus route, which in 2007 carried a mere 4,192 riders per day. This is down some 20 percent from the pre-Main Street rail line peak patronage Metro achieved with the Harrisburg bus route in 1999 of 5,499 riders and in 2000 of 5,277 riders.
As for travel forecasts for both proposed rail alignments, Metro stated in its FEIS for the North Corridor in 2006 that a rail alignment would draw 14,000 riders per day. That's right folks. $677 million for 14,000 riders per day. For the Southeast alignment, Metro forecast in its FEIS that a BRT alignment (not a light rail alignment) would draw 13,900 riders per day. It's quite possible that light rail would draw more riders. Either way, we are looking at two rail alignments whose capital costs approach 50 percent of the entire cost of the Katy Freeway refurbishment and expansion, but will probably only carry about the equivalent of two lanes of passengers and do nothing to expedite the movement of freight or goods. Transit ridership is up about 10 percent over 2007, but transit still carries only 4-5 percent of work trips and only 1-2 percent of overall trips. Moreover, transit patronage is up for both bus and rail.
Mobility is what matters, not mode. There is a very strong argument to be made that patronage would also improve if Metro simply installed dedicated bus lanes, decreased the frequency of stops to improve bus travel speeds, and increased headway frequencies to cut down on catastrophic wait times. This could all be done at a fraction of the cost of $130 million per mile light rail lines.
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But enough of today's troubles. The purpose of this post is to talk about a wonderful book that every transportation fan should have in his or her library and that book is Steven M. Baron's Houston Electric - The Street Railways of Houston, Texas.
Baron, a rail fan, writes that the book - which he published in 1996 - was a time consuming process and gives much credit to a number of streetcar enthusiasts who are no longer with us. The amount of material Mr. Baron managed to uncover was tremendous, considering that hard evidence on Houston's streetcar system is very scarce. He still managed to publish a book that is 223 pages long, including footnotes and sources. I should thank Mr. Baron for his efforts.
Baron starts off, appropriately, at the beginning. In 1868 Houston was, in his words, a 1 square mile hustling place with nothing but dirt roads which of course turned to mud when it rained. Nearly everyone walked. That is when Houstonians were greeted to the news that a horse car would be utilizing some old tracks from the Houston Tap & Brazoria Railroad which had been built years earlier, but had fallen into disrepair. Mule pulled cars started operating along Houston roads. Mules were preferred because they were steadier than horses and did not frighten or bolt. Baron goes on to describe the schemes which various early pioneers tried to get regular rail service into operation during the 1870's and 1880's.
Baron says that many figures were involved in the initial construction of Houston's early streetcar system, but perhaps the one man who was best known and identified with it was Henry MacGregor. MacGregor, who was born in New Hampshire but moved to Houston as a young man, became a secretary of the Galveston City Railroad, then later bought out and became general manager of Houston's budding streetcar lines (along with William Sinclair) in 1883. He had a swath of real estate holdings and eventually became involved in the effort to widen the Houston Ship Channel. He left MacGregor Park along with North and South MacGregor Way (which lie on either side of Braes Bayou, south of the University of Houston) to the City in his will. MacGregor and Sinclair took over a company called Houston City Street Railway, which had received a state charter in 1870, but regular service did not really start until years later. HCSR faced competition from another rail line, but Sinclair and MacGregor stepped in and acquired the assets of both companies.
Things went well until April of 1888 when another trio of ambitious men received a franchise from the Houston City Council to start a competing streetcar system. For a while in 1889, Houstonians experienced the drama of two companies laying track, a battle where City Council members led both sides and which led to legal fights, injunctions, and a handful of arrests. Despite this, Houston lamentably still had chronically muddy roads.
This state of affairs improved dramatically in 1891 when enough capital and technological expertise was available to electrify the streetcar lines. In scenes that were reminiscent of the Main Street rail line, Baron describes how service was often dangerous. Still, the electrification of the streetcar lines were a tremendous boon to the city, even in the midst of the nationwide depression of the 1890's.
Streetcars in Houston, as they did in every city of the world, also aided and abetted suburbanization and sprawl, just as the automobiles which succeeded them did. In a letter written in 1893 to the newspapers, a person who signed the letter "A Poor Man" wrote:
The adoption of electricity as a motor by the streetcar company in Houston is a blessing to the poor people of this city, because it allows a man of limited means to rent a house or to build a home in the outskirts of the city where rent is cheap or lots can be bought for a very small price, and live there and at the same time get into town early enough to attend to business. Rapid transit is the only thing that can enable a poor man to own his own home.
Real estate was big business after the 1890's and no savvy developer would really want to develop without streetcar access. Most famously, the Heights was developed with the streetcar in mind, but most other neighborhoods were also.
Baron also describes the strikes from labor unrest, management difficulties, and financial problems which plagued HCSR until out of state bondholders created a reorganization plan which brought the engineering firm Stone and Webster into the management picture. S&W brought capital, expertise, and some financial stability to the management of Houston's streetcar system and in fact provided management services all the way until the system went through its final shutdown in 1940. S&W helped oversee bus services during WWII and for some years afterwards. S&W reorganized the company and renamed it Houston Electric Company. The streetcar company was known by this name even after Houston Lighting and Power came along, and which in fact contracted to sell power to HEC in the 1920's, an idea that alleviated HEC from having to produce its own power. He also tells of the innovation and design of the Birney car and the resulting cost savings that were reaped by HEC because of the ability to do away with a conductor needing to be on board the vehicle.
In November 1914, a booming Houston, fresh with a new ship channel and flowing oil fields, witnessed a new competitor into the transit picture - the jitney automobile car. Baron goes on to write how competitive pressures from jitney cars drove HEC management absolutely crazy for the next decade, as jitneys eventually captured some 22 percent of the market. It didn't help that inflationary pressures from the First World War crippled finances, as did rising capital expenditures. Efforts to raise fares were usually met with petition drives from Houstonians opposing the measures, which often passed in elections.
Intriguingly, in 1920, the City of Houston hired a traction consultant named John Beeler to do a thorough study of Houston's transportation system. Beeler wrote, amongst many other things, that two-thirds of the streetcar routes were losing money. But he also wrote:
One of the reasons why the jitney bus has made such inroads into the railway business is because it saves time... The public demands rapid transportation.
Beeler went on to note that the average speed of travel achieved by streetcars was about 9 miles per hour, whereas the jitneys were averaging 14 miles per hour. Successive ordinances were implemented to subject jitney cars to ever increasing regulatory measures over the following decade. They were opposed by jitney drivers, but in 1924 City Council unexpectedly shutdown and banned jitneys altogether.
Baron goes on to state what is well known in historical and transportation circles in Houston, namely that the streetcar network reached its apex in 1927 with 90 miles of routes. What few know however is that as early as 1924, Houston Electric started trying out substituting or supplementing shuttle and commuter bus services to neighborhoods instead of going through the massive capital expense of extending streetcar tracks. The now affluent Southampton area of Houston got bus service, as did Harrisburg alignment in February 1928 - ironic considering that Metro now is going to spend huge sums of money to bring rail back to the street. The famous Bellaire streetcar route was abruptly replaced with bus service in September 1927 because the track was falling into poor condition. By 1929, Houston Electric was operating some 70 buses on 16 routes. Meanwhile, the City of Houston was implementing a paving program on its streets and was requiring that Houston Electric pay for paving of lanes where its streetcar tracks were, which proved to be another massive drain on HEC's coffers. The Depression proved to be a hard blow to HEC, with patronage and farebox recovery plummeting and transit losing patrons to an ever growing fleets of private automobiles. Baron includes a telling photo, dated approximately 1938, where a streetcar is pictured going south on Fannin, but which is seemingly lost in a crowd of ever increasing automobile traffic.
The story Baron tells is one that Houston's streetcar system did not abruptly collapse. Instead, the story that emerges from his book is that Houston's streetcar network experienced a steady switch from streetcars on rail to buses from the period of roughly 1924 - 1940. The company executives at HEC knew something that so many people who argue and fight over transit today do not, namely that the capital costs of running buses was - and always will be - a tiny fraction of the expense of trying to maintain and extend streetcar rail networks. They knew as early as the late 1920's that the future belonged to the bus. Moreover, the per capita number of rides that people took on transit had been in steady decline for decades. The peak ridership per person was in 1913 where people took over 220 rides per year on streetcars. This number had declined to 159 per year by the late 1920's and decline accelerated over the decades of the 20th century and into the 21st. Baron writes nothing about alleged conspiracies to put streetcars out of business and replacing them with buses.
Baron tells the story of how Houston's new bus network served Houston during WWII. It was ironic that Houston dismantled its streetcar network just before the war, as patronage went from 56 million in 1940 to a record 130 million in 1945, a figure that has never been equaled. Conceivably, this surge in ridership, caused by wartime banning of automobile production and gas rationing, might have helped HEC keep its streetcar network alive until perhaps the early 1950's, but nearly all cities except for a few older cities in America dismantled their rail lines as the 20th century moved onwards.
Baron has a chapter on the aftermath of the dismantling of Houston's streetcar network, telling readers that patronage continued to decline during the 1950's and bus headways were steadily lengthened. Municipal ownership was discussed as early as the late 1950's. He tells of Bernard Calkins's valiant efforts during the 1960's to keep bus service running, but Calkins was unable to reverse declining ridership and had to sell out to National City Lines. He tells of the City of Houston's purchase of the bus system from NCL in April 1974 for $5.3 million, with the new company being named HouTran. Metro was voted into existence in August 1978 and, armed with a 1 percent tax on commerce, the rail plans started coming immediately, heedless of the fact that transit only was carrying 1-2 percent of all travel trips in Houston. In 1988, Baron notes that Metro carried 76.9 million passengers on 980 buses on 106 routes. In 2008, Metro is on track to carry about 112 million boardings using about 1,000 buses on a similar number of routes. On a per capita basis, there has been practically no change in the past 20 years in per capita ridership despite the fact that gasoline is now nearly $3.50 per gallon.
Baron's general history of transit comprises about half the book. The later half of the book describes individual neighborhoods and the lines which served them. In what can only be described as a godsend, Baron also includes yearly patronage and farebox numbers that HCSR and HEC achieved in their years of operation. This alone makes his book a wonder to read.
In summary, the Wizard think this book should be required reading by every political figure, both elected and appointed, in America. I think that every political interest group should also read this book. I think that every person who voices or writes an opinion on public transportation in this country should also be required to read this book and should keep their mouths shut until they do. There just might be a small chance that the world might become a far more rational and saner place if they did.
Wizard
On the eve of the very competitive Texas primaries, the Wizard has found himself watching the developing drama over the proposed downtown soccer stadium and would be land purchases from former council member and obviously still city hall insider Louis Macey. The hard words of long time City of Houston civil servant Ubu Roi in that posted thread have added to the concerns I have heard from political newcomers whom I have been active with on working on various municipal issues. Some people who suddenly find themselves in the political arena, often not because of their own doing, end up wondering whether Houston's form of government invests too much power in the hands of the mayor.
To put some perspective on this issue, the Wizard consulted his library and specifically, Richard Murray's Change and Governance in Houston for some answers as to what Houston had in terms of its governing structure before. Houston was granted its initial charter in 1905. As Murray recounts, Houston's first form of government was a commission style government composed of a mayor and four aldermen. City administration was parceled out between the aldermen, for example one alderman might be responsible for taxes and land while another was responsible for water. The mayor had veto powers, limited appointment powers, and budget preparation authority. Needless to say, this balkanized city administration, made aldermen turf lords over their part of city administration, turned the mayor's veto power into a reactive tool rather than an agenda building tool, and in general led to a fragmented and patronage laden form of government.
Various reforms were implemented formally during the 1930's, but they often weren't exercised for various reasons. Houston then went through a city manager form of government starting in 1938, which lasted until 1947 when the start of the strong mayor form of government was implemented. As Murray notes, the civic and business elite of the late 1940's wanted a form of government which reflected - but did not direct - growth and development. And they got what they wanted.
But what about today? Ubu Roi's post to the BlogHouston thread largely spells out the problems anyone council member has had to face in trying to challenge a sitting mayor over the past 60 years. I would add that if a sitting mayor did not (or does not) particularly want to deal with public complaints, then the mayor can appoint council members to a committee where CM's can put up with the complaining from citizens, but then see a mayor simply shelve anything that committee does by not acting on it or putting it on the formal agenda. I would argue that one of the groups I am working with right now faces this very problem.
Additionally, in order for council to stand up to a sitting mayor, 10 votes have to be mustered in any issue. Considering the mayor's power to set the agenda, as well as dole out goodies to council members, that is an awfully steep mountain to climb for anyone trying to fight back against the city. True, citizens can try to use the rather archaic initiative and referendum power to place charter amendments up for a vote at the hustings, but as we have seen with the Revcap and the "rain tax", the council can either confuse the issue by offering up a counter amendment out of its own granted power, can refuse to implement the charter change, revisit the issue and possibly subvert the intent of the charter change, or simply contest in court for years on end as it has with the Revcap.
One somewhat bright aspect of Houston's government, as was noted in the BlogHouston post, is the role played by Houston's elected city controller. Steven Craig noted in an academically published paper that Houston has succeeded throughout its history in avoiding bankruptcy, something that the somewhat similarly sized Philadelphia nearly succumbed to in 1991, but which still faces what the Pew Trusts calls a quiet crisis.
Craig believes that the primary difference between Houston's avoiding financial catastrophies (even during the oil busts of the 1980's) and Philadelphia's not doing so lies in that Houston had an independently elected controller. Houston's controller has to certify that monies are in the budget this year, whereas Philadelphia's controller had (through the 1980's and early 1990's at least) to certify that there were monies available for the previous year's budget and was an appointed figure to boot. Hence Craig contended that this led to a creeping increase of debt which eventually to a near municipal collapse.
But what about Houston's mayor? Another clue as to the mayor's power is to examine how much money people are willing to raise or spend in order to acquire the job. Hotly contested mayoral elections result in candidates raising and spending several million dollars apiece, while city council district posts often are won with campaigns where winners raise between $30,000 - $200,000. At large seats often take over $100,000 to win, but Peter Brown's spending of some $500,000 of his family fortune twice to gain at at large seat is something of an anomaly. The vast differences in amounts spent to gain offices gives away a huge signal in Houston's political markets as to where the real power lies in Houston city government.
So, what to do, if anything? There is no doubt that Houston's government has some real strengths. Decisions certainly can get made and implemented, unlike the chaos and corruption which has seemingly gripped Dallas. I do think that the 5 at large members certainly help with making sure that there are members of council whose jobs are to address issues of substance to the entire city, rather than merely to a district constituency. The problem we run into over time is when there are murky or contested issues, such as the soccer stadium, annexations, flood and drainage, or any rail plans that Metro throws out there. Is there a true consensus on contested issues? For example, recently the Chronicle ran a story where Metro and the congressional delegation told the FTA that there was an overwhelming consensus for rail plans, but that ignores the fact that the 2003 Metro Solutions ballot plan passed by a 52-48 margin.
It also doesn't help that a particular district council member cannot really set any kind of agenda at all for his or her own district without acquiescing to the mayor. In effect, this reduces council members to becoming mere advocates for their areas.
Therefore, I would suggest the following:
1) As I wrote before, extend term limits to 10-12 years in order to reinvigorate political competition.
2) Give council members something to bargain with! I would suggest that each council member be granted the power to place one item on the city agenda perhaps every week, every other week, or maybe once per month. Of course, a spending limit would be placed on what each council member can put on their agenda items. Perhaps council members could, in return for abstaining from putting items continuously on the agenda, be permitted to "save up" for one or two big items over time if they were something of importance for their district or their own agenda. The mayor would continue to have the power to set the rest of the agenda. This would encourage some log rolling and horse trading.
3) Give council members some say over municipal boards and administrative oversight. Leave the mayor with administrative powers over departments so that one person oversees city administration. The mayor would continue to appoint council members to committees, but in return council would have the power to compel the surrender by administrative department heads of full and complete information on committee items. As a modest and simple check, I would suggest that council either be granted the power of having to approve the mayor's board appointees by simple majority. Removal of board members or administrative department heads could be done, but it would take a substantial supermajority (perhaps a minimum of 75 percent) to accomplish.
Alternately, council members could be granted the power to appoint a minority of board members with the mayor holding the majority. District council members who happen to have a board exclusively in their own area would naturally have more to say over that board.
4) The city council is set by charter to expand by two seats once the city's population reaches 2.1 million. These two seats are set to both be district council seats. Why not make one an at large seat and keep the other as a district seat to strengthen the overall legislative agenda so that it does not get balkanized?
5) Keep the budget approval process as it is today. Keep the city controller's role as it is today.
I would think that these reforms would allow broad agendas to continue to be advanced, while allowing council members to take a stand against a mayor if a particular agenda item is really going to hammer their constituents or if something really seems murky. It would also pave the way for a truer kind of consensus of government in our fair city.
Wizard
In today's edition of Houston's newspaper of record, transportation beat writer Rad Sallee notes that Harris County Metro has achieved record boardings. I had noted that a while back on Tory's blog, but I have yet to post the latest boardings statistics on my spreadsheet. Fare collection is also up. In general, I like this.
The easy explanation for this is that we have $3 per gallon gasoline. I posted my observations on Metro and posed an observation to an internet board which I belong to in conjunction with another poster's remarks that transit ridership for SEPTA in Philadelphia is also up, mostly on its commuter routes. The observation I posed was, whether price increases in gasoline or other transportation fuels will drive increases in transit patronage, and if so then how much?
The result was a fascinating conversation which centered around such issues as the marginal rate of substitution of motor vehicle use to transit, the income elasticity of demand, and the cross price elasticity of demand for transit use. The general thread of the discussion centered on the marginal cost of transit trips.
The level of discussion was of a far higher quality than that which I normally encounter when visiting local internet boards and blogs, given that fair number of these people are transportation professionals and journal published Ph.D's with no particular ax to grind. Well, they have no other ax to grind other than the simple wish to spend public monies only if absolutely necessary, and then as cheaply as possible lest their profession be given a really bad name. Many of these people are outraged at some of the projects which have been fobbed off on the taxpaying public.
The result of my posting of the Metro statistics and the other gentleman's SEPTA story from Philadelphia resulted in a discussion thread that went something like this:
One of the opening posts in the discussion thread was made by Steven Polzin:
In general gas prices would be a meaningful mode choice factor for a small number of all travelers and their impact on overall ridership could easily be overwhelmed by local factors such as economy, service changes, fare changes, parking cost changes, etc. Remember some of the impact of gas prices is not economic but folks showing a concern about global warming, energy independence, sending more $ to the mid east etc. that influence decisions. Thus part of the impact of high gas prices, to the extent that it exists, may bean emotional response not an economic one. The media and to a lesser extent the industry have fed a perception that gas prices have/will contribute to greater transit ridership. Looking at the numbers would suggest caution when setting these expectations.
The thread of the discussion went into such topics as how much to people value their time verses what amounts of money they were willing to pay in order to get somewhere more quickly and conveniently. Discussion also centered on whether longer transit trips were part of the equation of increased transit patronage.
Mills and Hamilton cited that Keeler and other researchers in the 1970's whose work indicated that people valued their commute time at roughly 30 - 50 percent of what their wage rates were. Charles Lave came to a similar conclusion which he published in this 1979 article in The Atlantic an article which discussed the high gasoline prices of the era when combined with various governmental laws which rationed gas through price ceilings and caused people to wait in line for gas instead:
But an increase in waiting time is, in fact, an increase in the real cost of gasoline: studies of transportation choice have established that commuters are willing to pay about 40 percent of an hour's wage to save an hour of travel time. That is, the increase in waiting time was equivalent to a real price increase of 50 to 100 percent, and motorists responded by reducing their weekday travel by about 15 percent. If this had continued, their long-term response would have been even greater since they would have had the time to make more important adjustments, such as changing automobiles or residences.
Mills and Hamilton go on to state that people value wait times, transfer times, and access times at much higher rates than those of times actually spent in transit. In particular, they state that wait times for vehicles are absolute killers for patronage, being put at some 2-4 times greater than one's average wage. Clearly one way to increase transit patronage is to make sure wait times are cut down to a minimum. The other is to find ways to increase the travel speeds of the vehicle, perhaps through bus routes with fewer stops or through dedicated bus lanes. It also points to the idea that people are willing to pay some rather high fuel prices before giving up their vehicles.
But what about the idea that higher fuel prices will cause people to abandon trucks and cars and instead patronize mass transit? One big clue for whether people will do this can be to see what has happened in Europe. This BBC story from 2003 indicated that outside London, only 11% of British people got to work by public transport, only 5% of commuting was by national rail. Only 3% cycled to work, while one in 10 walked. Prices for gas in Britain in 2003 were about $6.50 per gallon, while today they are about $7.50 - $8.00. The per capita income in Britain is some 10-20 percent lower than here in America, so there is not a terribly great difference on the income elasticity of demand figures.
Intriguingly, Metro's increased patronage numbers may be coming from the fact that since Houston has a booming economy, Houston may be drawing in more poor people in addition to wealthier income groups. In article in the New York Sun, noted urban economist Edward Glaeser writes that New York draws a lot of poor people and he states that one of the reasons why it does is because it has a large public transportation network. In a more formalized paper published recently in The Journal of Urban Economics (which I subscribe to), Glaeser speaks more thoroughly to the issue of the role of public transportation drawing people to cities and urbanizing poverty. Amongst the amazing interpretations of a model he works through, he writes that:
Let WRich be a rich person's opportunity cost of time, F be the fixed time cost of public transportation, and C be the fixed time cost of driving you get:
...
Alternatively, if WRichF < C then some rich people will take public transportation. In this case, a four ring city can be one outcome. In the inner ring, the rich take public transportation. In the next ring, the poor take public transportation. In the third ring, the rich drive and there may be a fourth ring where the poor drive.
Glaeser finds that proximity to public transportation does well at predicting the location of the poor in cities.
My thought is that if fuel prices were to increase to circa $7-10 per gallon, that Metro's patronage figures would increase from 4-5 percent of work trips to perhaps an overall range of somewhere around 10 percent. Perhaps Metro's annual boardings would increase to 200-300 million per year from the 100 million they are at now. However, those numbers are still not enough paying passengers to enable Metro to stand on its own two feet.
This is frustrating to me because my real dream for public transportation is that I want public transportation to be able to pay for itself and not have to be considered something that can only be provisioned by government. Houston had private bus service operated by Bernard Caulkins all the way into the early 1970's, when the Arab oil embargo caused gas prices to climb 4 times. That in turn required a doubling of fares which caused patronage to drop by one third. Still, despite a sales tax regime that approaches half a billion dollars, Metro struggles to draw as many riders as Mr. Caulkins did in the 1960's. Once Metro was voted into existence, one of the first items on the agenda was to start building trains everywhere. Since then, we have gotten so used to this crap that nobody anywhere ever seems to have remembered how the world once really was.
Private provision of public transportation would destroy the rationale for taxation. It would also:
1) Put paid the question once and for all as to whether rail or buses are cheaper to own and operate.
2) Destroy the rationale for the 1,500 foot radial condemnation zones around train or BRT stations that Metro now wields and the potential for political corruption.
3) Put an end to the ever twisting and changing rationales that the public wants out of public transportation. Instead, a private actor would simply concentrate of providing good service and making a profit while moving people from one place to another. Tory alluded to this when he wrote:
Metro is a public agency subject to the will of the voters. It started out as subsidized alternative transportation for the poor and disabled. Then people wanted commuting alternatives (the HOV buses). Then they wanted local rail. Now, given the local boom of $100 oil, they'd like to see some freeway congestion reduction by attracting more riders out of their cars.
4) In a similar vein, getting government out of the provision of public transportation would put an end to the political battles where various groups try to capture the agency for their own purposes, whether they be money and patronage, urban reengineering, downtown groups wanting rail lines to cover up for the fact that their property is expensive, for shelling out to run rail to airports through neighborhoods where Metro previously refused to place more bus stops because of a lack of patronage, $300 million intermodal transit temples, or any other idea they may come to mind.
5) Public transportation would not be considered a jobs program with the specter of unionization by government workers who can't lose their jobs.
6) A private bus company would probably buy cheaper equipment and look to do things like put maps at bus stops. We would no longer see large 50 seat buses running around empty anymore.
7) One thing people might remember was that in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus that was operated by a private bus company. Blacks then protested the bus company by refusing to use the company's services. If blacks were to try that same political tactic today over some issue, Metro could care less. It doesn't help that the Black elite of today is in on the handouts for contracts.
8) The compadres at BlogHouston would not have Dick Nixon Metro to kick around anymore. I could write about more interesting issues, like when cellulose ethanol will become economically viable as a transportation fuel.
More than anything, privatizing public transportation would take the politics out of the equation, which would bleed off all of the intensity of the entire debate.
And so it goes. It's getting late and tomorrow's another day.
Wizard
Well, well, well. The Wizard suffered a cratered hard drive a number of days back and subsequently found that his available backups were not exactly up to the task of restoring their contents. Sigh... life goes on.
As it is, my quality of life has returned to its normal excellence, all without a dime of taxpayer monies or time wasted with worthless political rhetoric. Some of this was achieved by shopping this weekend at three of my favorite places, Frys, Borders, and Home Depot. I also purchased two new pairs of running shoes from a place I have done business with for nearly 20 years.
And speaking of worthless rhetoric, On Thursday, February 7, 2008, Houston's newspaper of record published the findings of a panel of so-called experts from the Urban Land Institute and their ideas for Houston's future. Tory writes about it here. I am on a fresh install of Windows as I write this, so I cannot access the PowerPoint of the group's "findings". Still, I shall deal with their points as made by the Chronicle and Tory.
1) Houston needs more housing in downtown.
Answer: The marketplace will answer that question, not a panel of people who possibly might have been hired by some downtown Houston landowners and interest groups, conceivably at taxpayer expense. As it is, the 3,500 or so people who live in downtown Houston live in housing whose cost gradients are going for at least $235 per square foot, if not higher. The office space in downtown Houston currently has gradients of $275 or more per square foot. Meanwhile, would be homeowners can buy in some areas within 10 miles of downtown Houston which have price gradients of $70-$90 per square foot. Doing so and driving a car into downtown saves them many thousands of dollars every year in housing costs. As such, the Wizard believes that the market for housing in downtown Houston is probably saturated and will remain a small niche market. The same market forces which left downtown dormant after nightfall as late as the late 1990's have returned to some degree and will probably stay that way. Funny, but some people who have written about this don't seem to understand this idea.
Meanwhile, there is no compelling reason why Fry's, Home Depot, or other companies should locate downtown. Doing so would put them at a cost disadvantage vis-a-vis with their marketplace competitors. Land is valuable thanks to the agglomerated economies of scale afforded via the construction of skyscrapers, which allow dozens or hundreds of firms needing office space to bundle together (like law firms who would like to be just down the street from the City and County government and court houses) and outbid manufacturers or retailers for access to downtown property via renting floors of such towers. Moreover, for many there is no compelling reason to locate near downtown for access to the port or to rail heads, as there is no advantage to be found for most to do so.
2) Houston's competitors are (insert city here).
Houston's size, as is the size of most cities in a market economy (and yes, 1/3rd of the U.S. economy is in the political economy), will be determined by the size of its markets. The factor payments flowing into Houston thanks to $90 per barrel petroleum and $7 per 1,000 cubic foot natural gas are incredible. If you can't make some money right now, then there is something wrong with you. Naturally Houston should be expanding.
Still, it would be nice if we could attract some other non-fossil fuel firms, or if our current incumbents would show enough foresight to start buying up land so that they can control cellulose ethanol production from offices located in Houston. In general however, I am not a big believer in the idea that Houston is competing against cities like Sydney.
3) Houston should consider planning for its ad-hoc sewer system.
Ah! Now these guys are onto something. Staying on top of your infrastructure is a very wise thing to do. Too bad the political classes here in town seem more interested in building sports temples rather than deal with sewage.
4) Houston must start shelling out billions to run rail to the airports.
Oh, my goodness! If this one didn't give away who paid for this report, then I don't know what would.
The Metro Solutions 2003 ballot language called for the taxpaying public to shell out for rail to both Hobby and Intercontinental. Naturally, the rail lines lead to - you guessed it - downtown Houston. Tory's thread questions how far this would be. The Wizard works downtown and drove to Intercontinental in December 2006 when taking a business trip to London and onto Algeria. The distance of the drive along I-45? 25 miles. It took me 55 minutes in 5pm Friday evening rush hour traffic with 1 freeway accident to make it to Intercontinental. The Metro Solutions ballot language states that a hypothetical route would be 21.5 miles.
The cost of a light rail route to Intercontinental? That would be a minimum of $3 billion. We would be giving up a Katy Freeway refurbishment and expansion - all 18 lanes (with room for two more), 350,000 daily vehicle capacity, and tens of thousands of freight trucks - for such a project. Meanwhile, Metro stated in its 2006 North Corridor FEIS that the first 5.4 miles of LRT transit from downtown to Northline Mall would attract 15,000 riders per day.
Folks - shelling out for rail to the airports is a recipe for disaster. If the downtown interest groups - which in every expanding city are sick of people running away from them because sprawl makes their land less valuable - politically demand and insist on dedicated public transportation to the airports from downtown Houston, then build a pair of dedicated bus lanes to the airports and run buses along them. It will save the taxpayer a ton of money.
In a future post, the Wizard will give gentle readers some pearls of wisdom regarding the phenomenon of cities which have run rail to their airports.
5) H-GAC needs to distribute transportation dollars based on quality of life criteria.
I have a question to ask: Define quality of life for me? If shelling out billions of dollars to run rail to the airports results in more traffic congestion because that money was not spent on creative ideas like tunneling under freeways, then that results in a diminishing of my quality of life. One of the reasons why people have been sprawling outwards from urban cores for generations is to get away from the historically narrow streets and inadequate transportation infrastructure which existed in Central Business Districts. Sprawl helps alleviate congestion, not cause it. Anyone who doubts this should do what I did and spend a good 10 weeks in London (or better yet, Bangkok). There you will see the results of narrow roads from antiquity, complemented with dense development. Average speed of travel around London? Try 8-13 miles per hour.
Moreover, trying to insert language that transportation dollars should be doled out on non-quantifiable issues like "quality of life" detracts from dealing with concrete problems, such as measuring that a freeway is backed up for 8 hours per day and that vehicle traffic is slowed to 20-30 mph during those time frames. Maybe it is time that we should start considering adding some more lanes somewhere, right?
So the Wizard's verdict? I'd accept the recommendations on sewage and non-zoning and file the rest of this report into the rubbish bin. We'd all be better off for it.
More Fireballs, Lightning Bolts, and Hell Storms to come.
Wizard
I received the following email today. I will share it in its entirety, the only comment being that the Los Angeles MTA has spent $11 billion (inflation adjusted) on rail transit since 1985, only to achieve the same number of boardings it achieved 22 years ago.
Wizard.
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Riding the Silver Line bus rapid transit from Boston Logan Airport into downtown Boston last weekend via a Big Dig tunnel -- a quick ride, on a bus with luggage racks -- got me looking at the transportation performance of the Big Dig project.
Answer, from recent professional presentations: enormous reductions in traffic congestion. Apparently, the traffic engineering in the new tunnels eliminates weaving and bottlenecks. T-Ops is working 24 X 7 with cameras and other sensors. b> The bottom line number is 62% improvement in traffic flow.
See recent illustrated document attached in pdf, an end-of-year edition of Peter Samuels' Toll Roads News - found here.
There is a Powerpoint presentation in PDF showing performance graphics by ITS engineer Dan Baxter from last October here.
Dan Baxter and Peter Samuels describe the financial mismanagement
as well.
For those who want more, there is lots of detail in this screen scrape of an article by the same Dan Baxter in Roads & Bridges magazine from June 2007.
Big believer
Despite setbacks, "Big Dig" potential benefits are stratospheric
- By Dan Baxter
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Boston's Central Artery/ Tunnel project, nicknamed the "Big Dig." Records of project planning activity date all the way back to 1982, and as of 2007 all sections of the project are now open to traffic.
More than $14.6 billion has been expended, and recent projections put completion closer to $15 billion. As with all highway projects, the Big Dig journey passed through planning to design, then on to construction and finally into operations and maintenance. The similarities with other highway projects stop there. The Big Dig has been unique in many ways, not all positive, including unparalleled cost escalations and highly publicized construction problems. Prior to completion, the only positive news has been a few construction achievements well known in the industry and the management of traffic during construction. New measurements and projections of project benefits are now available and an assessment of the true value of the project is possible. Even if the project does eventually achieve its original goals, will the highway construction industry ever see another mega project like the Big Dig? If there is another mega project with the scope and cost of the Big Dig, will it be managed differently based upon lessons learned? Looking back at the Big Dig, what really went wrong and what really went right?
True to traffic
With the final cosmetic touches now being put on the largest mega project in U.S. history, it is now possible for the first time to speculate how history will judge the project. As with every human endeavor, nothing is in reality a total success or a total failure. A Big Dig scorecard needs to consider costs, schedule, quality of construction and tangible benefits to the public. At a staggering $14.6 billion for 7.5 centerline miles of highway, the cost of the project is over $300,000 per inch. At that rate, achieving a positive benefit-to-cost ratio for the project will require unprecedented benefits. However, the facts emerging show the numbers may be closer than you might think.
The Big Dig has had more ups and downs than the numerous ramps that drop from the surface into the labyrinth of new subterranean highways. The most recent blow to the project came in August 2006 when a fatal accident resulting from a ceiling failure became the latest in a series of project problems to make national headlines.
Although it has been consistently maligned in its hometown newspaper, the news from the Big Dig is not all bad. Some monumental construction challenges have been met and mastered, including the soil freezing and tunnel jacking required to complete the I-90 extension to the new Ted Williams Tunnel. Now that the facilities are fully open to traffic, it is clear that the excessive daily traffic congestion and related air pollution that once gripped downtown Boston has been substantially reduced. A large portion of the vehicle delay disappeared with the giant concrete and steel elevated freeway that for two score years blackened the fourth-story windows of adjacent Boston buildings.
When it comes to traffic, the promise of the project planners to vastly improve traffic flow was kept, and even exceeded. A popular sound bite used by project critics during the design phase was "it will be obsolete the day it opens." Traffic data collected and compared with "before" conditions have proven the critics who voiced that position wrong. Dramatic reductions in travel time and increases in traffic flow have now been documented in a new study recently published by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (MTA). The study was conducted independently of the Big Dig construction management consultants. The study, titled Economic Impacts of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project, performed by the Boston-based international transportation and economics consulting group EDR, stated that "the original 1990 environmental projection was that the `Big Dig' would improve traffic flow by 40% by 2010. Today, the project exceeds that with a 62% improvement in traffic flow. This was accomplished while overall traffic volume grew by 23.5% since 1995."
Improved traffic flow is only one part of the picture. New public parks, reconnected neighborhoods, revitalized commercial activity and an aesthetic face-lift unparalleled in American municipal history have prepared Bostonians for a brighter socioeconomic future.The Rose Kennedy Greenway and the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge will transform the path of the old Central Artery into an extraordinarily beautiful stretch of parkland crisscrossed by sidewalks and streets that reconnect the city to its waterfront. The bustling crowd of locals and tourists that can be seen every day walking about at the Faneuil Hall Marketplace will soon be able to stroll farther east through the R.K. Greenway to parks like Christopher Columbus Park that sit at the bay's edge. Dramatic increases in the value of downtown, South Boston and Seaport District real estate have been realized and are projected to soar with the completion of the greenway. As spectacular as the traffic improvements and urban area transformations may be, they are not sensational enough to capture national headlines. The Big Dig's unexposed benefits are every bit as real as the costs and problems so readily exposed by the broadcast media.
Sign from above
In spite of the realization of the key kept promises, the Big Dig is as beleaguered as ever, and new fears about structural integrity have eroded the public's perception of the project into a mired mess of mixed reviews.
After enduring more than a decade of political firestorms and media bashings, the past two years has seen a series of successful and meaningful ribbon cuttings. The opening of new tunnel sections and connector ramps, the world's widest cable-stayed bridge and numerous public parks only temporarily lifted the spirits of the remaining project partisans. Those spirits must certainly have fallen again with the concrete ceiling panel that killed a motorist last year. The tragedy started a new series of searing public commentary and politically charged lawsuits.
In the days following the disaster, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney "knee-jerked," went on the offensive and publicly questioned the safety of the tunnels. As the top elected state official, his lack of confidence prematurely trumped lesser bureaucrats who were responsible for determining the actual cause of failure and dealing with the problems. The reaction was predictable if not understandable as the Big Dig has always been an easy target for criticism. Defending the Big Dig project in the light of this catastrophe might appear to be political suicide in the short term. However, joining the ranks of critics may erode long-term credibility when it is time to take credit for the benefits.
The accident that killed Milena Delvalle of Boston's Jamaica Plain was caused by the failure of an epoxy-based anchoring system that held a large concrete ceiling panel in place. Reports from the scene indicated that there was no evidence of epoxy on some of the anchors that were lying in the debris on the road. A cursory search of public project records reveals that ceiling panel installation methods have been the subject of claims and changes and formed the basis of a value-engineering effort managed by the management consultant, a joint venture of Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff. The causes of the failure have been reported to be a deadly mix of poor workmanship, flawed inspection and questionable decisions by project management that ultimately reduced the factor of safety to save time and money.
The investigation found that the failed anchors were among the first to be installed using the epoxy method, with the implication not that the oldest anchors failed first, but that the first anchors were installed by crews inexperienced with the method. Although there is no way to prevent motorists from having accidents due to human error, there is no excuse for a purely structural failure due to nothing more than the weight of an element under normal stress conditions.
As each month goes by absent of more failures, the August 2006 tragedy looks more and more like an isolated problem. People in the construction industry know that history is peppered with tunnel collapses. Less than a month after the Boston accident, a highway tunnel linking the cities of Guangnan and Yanshan collapsed in southwestern China, trapping 25 workers. Unfortunately, like so many other "firsts," the Big Dig is the site of the only highway tunnel collapse in memory to occur shortly after the tunnel was opened to traffic.
Structural failures over the past two years provide a roadmap to the No. 1 thing that has gone wrong with the Big Dig. Since project inception, the highly privatized program management of the project has had amazingly minimal public-agency oversight, placing the true power of the purse strings and key day-to-day decision making in the hands of the management consultant.
Highway construction projects a fraction of the size of the Big Dig have had twice as many public-sector managers. Privatization itself is not the problem, because without privatization mega projects are not possible. The problem ensues when the privatized management is forced to operate outside their realm and role in order to fill a vacuum. When construction problems occurred, Boston political adversaries and the media have had the upper hand over the Big Dig management consultant, which is constrained both by its position as a private firm and its responsibility to deal in technical accuracy rather than shooting from the hip.
In the case of the tunnel leaks in 2004, the strong condemnation by the Boston Globe essentially went unanswered for six months. Six days is too long, much less six months. The Big Dig has needed both a political and a public-agency advocate empowered and motivated to respond quickly to quell the rush to judgment. Future mega projects need more than engineering and construction leadership. Advocacy in the ranks of the politically elected leaders and appointed agency heads must be cultivated and maintained to establish ongoing public confidence and accountability.
Money to move
The second thing that went wrong was the magnitude of the cost escalation. Some cost increases would be expected, but quadrupling costs point to either incompetence in estimating or intentional lowballing.
The reality of the Big Dig is that from the start, schedule compliance was favored over budget adherence. Management spent money to keep the project moving, knowing that failure to overcome obstacles in individual contracts would have a ripple effect throughout the project. In the mega project environment, the whole is split into many smaller parts that must fit together in both space and time. If one contractor's schedule slipped, several other contractors could claim a delay. Public-sector and political accountability also would have gone a long way to address the continuing issue of cost escalation. The decision to blame the management consultant for underestimating true project costs during project planning may have provided a convenient scapegoat to deflect political accountability. However, it also had the long-term detrimental effect of exposing the management consultant to media pressure to which it could not respond and eroding the public confidence in the privatized program management of the Big Dig.
When a technical problem occurs that rightly requires the management consultant's action, even their best efforts are met with skepticism. The lesson learned is that you can't have it both ways. If you use your program manager as a scapegoat in the media, you can't expect the public to accept your total reliance on him when problems arise.
Still glossy
The advocates of this project in the 1980s produced glossy brochures that focused primarily on elimination of the habitually congested elevated portion of I-93 in downtown Boston. One particularly powerful brochure was the "Now you see it, now you don't" piece that included a photo of the jammed Central Artery on the cover and an artist's rendering of a new park-like setting in the same location. The primary benefits described in detail were transportation related, and the secondary benefits described much more vaguely had to do with reconnecting neighborhoods" and creating new green space for Bostonians to enjoy. It is now possible to compare the promises of the project's visionaries with the realities of the as-built project.
A justification for the project was certainly that operation of the existing highway had become unacceptable by any standard. The 14-hour-long peak hour average speeds on the elevated Central Artery had dipped into single digits, reflecting one of the worst operational conditions in the world. Due to the extremely poor existing conditions, the contrast between the before and after conditions is truly dramatic and helps to justify the cost of the project.
The astounding results of the EDR study show dramatic improvements in average speeds and delays. As an example, the daily average travel speed for the old Central Artery northbound was 10 mph; the Big Dig quadrupled it to 43 mph. The average speed for all harbor tunnels (the new Ted Williams Tunnel plus the existing Sumner and Callahan tunnels) nearly tripled from 13 mph to 36 mph. These unprecedented improvements in traffic flow have the combined effect of reducing the daily hours of vehicle delay on these facilities a whopping 66% from 38,088 daily hours of vehicle delay in 1995 to 12,834 in 2005 after the Big Dig opened. The delay reductions for some individual minor movements were mind-boggling, such as the notorious bottleneck between Storrow Drive eastbound and I-93 northbound that improved by 81%. This was the site of an apartment building with a sign that read "IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU'D BE HOME BY NOW." The Big Dig decreased the average travel time through this segment from 16 minutes to less than four minutes. This perpetual traffic jam was as much a Boston landmark as the Old North Church, and now it is essentially gone. All of these numbers were achieved in spite of a growth in overall traffic demand reflected in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) of 13% in the same period.
Where did the traffic go? The traffic volume is still there. It has even increased. It is the delay that was eliminated, and this was the vision of the project. The true genius of this mega project has always been not just the replacement of decaying infrastructure, but the amazingly efficient transportation connections that the new viaducts, bridges and tunnels create that speed traffic flow throughout the metropolitan Boston region.
The Big Dig is essentially America's largest interchange. With these connections, the whole metropolitan highway system operated by the MTA finally functions as a system, and reductions of demand on formerly bottlenecked facilities abound. Traffic is better throughout Boston, not just in the project limits.
The EDR study projects that "these improvements are now providing approximately $167 million annually in time and cost savings for travelers. This includes $24 million of savings in vehicle operating cost plus a value of $143 million of time savings. Slightly over half of that time-savings value ($73 million) is for work-related trips and can be viewed as a reduction in the costs of doing business in Boston." The study points out that the promise of the original 1990 project documents used for the environmental assessment projected that the Big Dig would improve traffic flow by 40% by 2010.
In light of these improvements, is it possible to consider the Big Dig a failure? Unfortunately, if traffic were the only benefit, the astronomical project cost would make the Big Dig investment questionable in comparison with a more traditional reconstruction. The traffic analysis portion of the EDR report claimed that the completed project provides annual savings of $177 million (2005
dollars) in operating costs and delay reductions for roadway users. Although these numbers are impressive, based on traffic benefits alone it would take 80 years to break even (not considering the cost of a traditional alternative). In order to evaluate the true benefits of the Big Dig, the economic effects on real estate also must be considered.
Positive square feet
The historically volatile economy of the greater metro Boston region now sits at the near side of a new economic boom that will be fueled by nothing more than the subterranean superhighway brought by the Big Dig. In real estate, location is everything, and the Big Dig is transforming industrial wasteland choked by congestion into easily accessible high-end real estate.
The Big Dig will create an estimated 16 to 21 million sq ft of new commercial and residential development in the South Boston Seaport District alone. The EDR study stated that real estate projects already developed or in construction and planning total 10 million sq ft of office and retail space, including nearly 8,000 new housing units, reflecting $7 billion in private investment made possible by the Big Dig. The increase in property value is estimated to bring in as much as $120,000 million per year of much-needed property tax revenue. Combined with the prospect of future increases to toll revenue, this boost should help the commonwealth maintain its investment provided the dollars are properly appropriated to maintaining the roadways.
Given the history of Boston and the value of the adjacent Back Bay area, a man-made residential and commercial gold mine created from the swampy marsh south of the Charles River, there is no doubt that the market forces needed to capitalize on the Big Dig investment are converging and will drive the project's true value into the stratosphere within the next 20 years. With the concrete and steel canyon of the Central Artery being replaced by the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a remarkably beautiful property value engine that will provide a 180° swing in the aesthetics of downtown Boston, the project planner's commitment to keeping the air rights publicly owned will pay off 10-fold.
Another clear winner from the Big Dig is Boston's Logan International Airport. After years of steadily losing passengers to expanding airports in New Hampshire and Rhode Island due to the untenable travel time in the existing access highways and tunnels, Logan will solidify its position as king of the New England airports. The EDR study reported that access to Logan "is now easier for an added 800,000 Massachusetts residents who with the full opening of the I-90 connector to the Ted Williams Tunnel, now live within 40 minutes of the airport. Today, 2.5 million residents live within 40 minutes of Logan International Airport."
The Big Dig also delivered a massive shot in the arm for the New England economy. The cost of the cubic yards of excavation, new concrete and steel do not add up to $14.6 billion. The difference was corporate profits and job income. The Big Dig created nearly 50,000 jobs in Boston. Over 50 engineering teams and over 125 contractors received valuable contracts. Although some Boston
families paid dearly for the privilege to work on the Big Dig, the worker safety record was good. The Hegarty family in Dorchester lost their father, John, the first worker killed on the project after six years of construction without a fatality. Given the complexity and size of the project, the overall safety record of the project was far above average and provided unusually safe and high-paying jobs.
Touching the nerve
Recently, I sat in the $200 million Operations Control Center talking with Jim Murphy of the MTA, the man who is responsible for day-to-day operation of the world's most expensive labyrinth of tunnels, freeways, viaducts and tollways. Murphy spoke with sincerity in a serious tone about his job managing the facilities. He dodged no questions, admitting a few shortcomings of the project, but at the same time described the complexities and realities of this underground superhighway in a matter of fact way.
It may be hard for some to admit it, but the project worked. The Big Dig did what it was supposed to do, what it was promised to do. All the critics who lined up to say it would fail were wrong. The criticism of project cost escalations was justified, but the total value of the project to Boston will continue to exceed expectations. In an era when spending on a foreign war can be $2 billion per week, the cost of the Big Dig could be expended in eight weeks.
Baxter is North American ITS Director for Stantec.
Source: Roads & Bridges June 2007 Volume: 45 Number: 6
Copyright © 2008 Scranton Gillette Communications
Final notes:
Speaking as one who often experienced Central Artery congestion in the 1970s as a part-time Boston resident, it's an impressive, albeit expensive human achievement. There was a 2006 journalistic celebration of the achievement as a reversal of urban renewal destruction in the Washington Post at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/04/
AR2006080401755.html
http://www.masspike.com/traffic_cameras/trafficcams.html
provides streaming live video of traffic in central Boston.
This past Wednesday, the Wizard discerned of voices in the wind which brought me news that there was going to be a hearing held at the City Hall Annex concerning the controversial 23 story Ashby high rise project, located at 1717 Bissonnet.
To reiterate the story for gentle readers, the builders purchased property from willing sellers in the affluent and politically influential Southampton neighborhood of inner Houston. The developer then went through the process of getting all necessary City of Houston permits and chipped in money for sewer improvements. Things were going as planned when the certain parties in the neighborhood found out about the project and went bananas, but do read the Southamption residents story first about whether the developer followed the rules on obtaining permits.
The neighborhood kicked their clout into high gear and now Houston is faced with a situation of having to meet the political demands of an affluent neighborhood, whose demands of stopping the project would, on their face, otherwise largely prohibit high rise apartment, town home, or condominium development in residential areas throughout all of Houston.
And so it was that the Wizard left his day job that evening and proceeded to head over to City Hall. I found myself in a "stakeholders meeting", but this was no ordinary stakeholders meeting if this is what you think of as people being stakeholders. The people present at this meeting were the big guns, people (or their representatives) whose opinions count for something in this City. Chairing the meeting was Andy Icken, and Ray Chong was with him. Also present were City Council members Toni Lawrence, Anne Clutterbuck (whose district includes the location of the Ashby high rise), several prominent commercial developers or their representatives, the obviously concerned residential developers, a gentleman representing the newly formed Houstonians for Responsible Growth, and a number of consultant / lobbyists such as former District A City Council member Helen Huey. In other words, these weren't stakeholders (if that is what you would want to call them) who were going to mouth off some uninformed opinion about an important subject. These were people who were very much in the know about a very important debate. Nearly all of the participants were handed out a large packet of images depicting land use maps, ordinance change drafts, notes, and so forth. As it was, the Wizard did not receive a packet as I came late to the meeting, but I kept quiet, observed the unfolding drama, and took notes. Any errors in describing the language or scope of the ordinance are solely the Wizard's responsibility.
To wit, what was being debated are changes to Chapter 45 of the City's ordinances having to do with traffic within the City municipality. Since Houston does not have a zoning ordinance which would otherwise be manipulated to swipe away the property rights of landowners and ban such high rise developments, the primary way in which the problem is to be regulated away or mitigated is via traffic studies which would otherwise supposedly cause a "disproportionate impact" on the community in question. The mitigation envisioned of course would take the form of causing smaller structures being built than those advanced by the developer because of alleged impacts of additional traffic.
Before going any further, one might dwell on the following questions. First, what is the meaning of the phrase disproportionate impact? Secondly, would the mitigation measures wipe out projects all together - an interesting idea since certain people are pushing for a denser urban area?
In his opening remarks, Mr. Icken made it clear early on in the meeting that the new ordinance is nowhere near being close to becoming a fixed ordinance at the present time, but that the changes that had already taken place were major changes from November 2007. He announced that there a number of iterations left before the ordinance was finalized. He told the assembled group that Chapter 45 was not the only ordinance that affects traffic in Houston (this is in fact true). What was desired was a narrowly focused ordinance, with few being affected, specifically areas with high density development.
The Wizard found Mr. Icken's statement to be rather extraordinary, indeed it set the tone for the entire meeting. The reality of the matter is that - yes - the Ashby high rise is in play, but the fact of the matter is that though there are a number of high rises in what could be considered primarily residential areas (again, more on that in a minute), there really are not all that many of them. I drive by two of them every day on my way into work: The Huntingdon and the Inwood Manor at 3711 San Felipe, both of which I should point out are in the heart of River Oaks. In the case of the Inwood, it abuts single lane roads on one side and both are in areas which I would consider to be single family home residential neighborhoods. In other words, what this highly intelligent assembled group was trying to do was do away with something that is a relatively rare occurrence when taken in the whole entirety of the City, and their questioning and tortured deliberations reflected that reality.
Amongst the questions expressed about the rewritten ordinance is whether the Director of Public Works is to decide whether a required traffic study is good or bad? There are supposed to be objective and quantitative measures that are to govern the revised traffic studies that are to be mandated. There is supposed to be predictability in the ordinance. Still, anyone with an inquiring and skeptical mind could easily be left wondering whether such studies could be tossed aside and left to the whims of caprice based on what is expedient from the standpoint of being able to pander to political opportunism.
Amongst the primary filters being deliberated upon are that traffic analyses will have to be filed if there are 70 dwellings per acre. In the packets that were distributed to stakeholder participants, there were pages that showed what the hoped for effects of such filters would be like when applied against a sample of large or high rise structures around town. The page then showed that once all of the filters were applied, then structures like the Ashby high rise would be the only class or type of structure that would be winnowed out and for which alterations or mitigations would have to be put into place.
Mr. Icken asked the rhetorical question, that being "how was it that we picked these numbers?" What he meant was that he was referring to the 70 dwellings per acre figure. The reason was that they were looking at areas that could be considered to be single family residential within a radius of 500 feet around the proposed new high rise development in terms of what would be "substantially impacted" by the new development. A member of the planning department then uttered a phrase which was stated no fewer than four times during the time I was at the meeting, namely that "we just don't have enough data" or "we just have so much data" to make such judgments.
Now one prominent person who criticizes planning writes in page 47 of his most recent book that:
There are several technical barriers to the success of planning. These barriers prevented planning from working in the Soviet Union, and they are just as much of a problem for American planners.
* The Data Problem: Planning requires more data than can be collected in time for it to be useful to planners;
Hmmm. Of course if you are this guy, then the aforementioned fellow who has been discredited so many times is presumably wrong regarding his thoughts on the data problem as well, ergo one might presume that raising such questions like whether there is enough data to make rational plans for something like designing (or in the case of Houston, reshaping) something as complicated as an entire City with millions of people are - well - non issues. Then how do you reconcile what I heard debated at this meeting with what was wrong about the aforementioned observations made by the book author?
Icken went on to admit that - and I kid you not - that "there is no science to choosing the 70 dwellings per acre" standard which the Planning Department chose as its level at which traffic studies are to be mandated.
The questioning started. One person asked the intrepid question whether this ordinance change would apply if there was a fire at an existing site? The answer was that if the structures were to be rebuilt as is, then no, there was to be no traffic studies to be required. If the property were to be rebuilt to higher densities, then permits and traffic studies would be required if they hit the aforementioned levels.
Then one person dropped a bomb: What exactly is a "residential neighborhood?"
Now many people, especially those who live in cities which are strictly and rigidly segregated by harsh zoning ordinances, might laugh at such a question. But this is Houston. If one travels along Washington Avenue, one witnesses single family housing, mixed with town houses and some light industry. One can also witness this along Harrisburg. Clearly some people can deal with nuisances via self buffering, and others will tolerate living in mixed industrial areas if they can obtain cheap housing. This of course flies in the face of zoning theory which often believes that people's buyer or consumer preference bundles will dictate that they will not tolerate such preferences at all.
As to what Icken's answer was as to what constitutes a residential neighborhood, which would be part of the requirement which would trigger a traffic study, the answer was - and I kid you not - "We know one when we see one!" More seriously, the idea is that the Planning department is looking to apply a standard that if 40-60 percent of the areas within 500 feet of the high rises are to be considered residential, then this triggers the traffic analysis requirement.
Despite Icken's amazing admissions regarding the fact that there was no science to choosing the 70 dwellings per acre floor at which traffic analyses were to be required, he did state that the revised ordinance was not designed to control building sizes. One thrust of the ordinance was to analyze peak hour trips in neighborhoods.
Questions were asked as:
1) What constitutes "congested street intersections?" These are to be mandated in traffic studies. Icken stated that a congested street is one where it has reached 90 percent of its rated capacity.
2) How is this ordinance to be reconciled in the mobility planning of the City of Houston as reflected in the CIP (capital improvement plan)?
3) Will the City be "guilty" of allowing more congestion? The answer from Icken is, yes.
4) Will the ordinance not be reasonably consistent with other prominent ordinances, such as the hotel motel ordinance?
5) Does everything in a 500 foot radius circle get subjected to the study? For example, say that a portion of Rice University falls within the 500 radius of the proposed high rise development? Does that mean that all of Rice University gets roped into the traffic analysis study?
6) In a related question, a fellow whom I happened to be seated next to asked what happens if the 500 foot radius of the high rise encloses part of a shopping mall? Does the mall traffic get counted in the study? If so, then how will it be applied?
Answer from the Planning officials? You guessed it: "We don't know yet. We are limited by the lack of data."
7) One person asked what would be the impact of bodies of water?
8) An intriguing situation was brought up by a woman who expressed the issue that organizations such as the Menil Collection and St. Thomas University have housing in their neighborhoods which for tax purposes is considered non-profit, but would these properties be considered residential or non-conforming residential? What would be the status of non-profit entities? Would they be considered commerical, even if they were in areas which were largely residential? She gave the example that there are nuns who have housing who are affiliated St. Thomas University and that there are artists who are temporarily affiliated with the Menil who are housed in buildings owned by both institutions. What would be their status under this revamped ordinance?
This same woman noted that many Inner Loop neighborhoods have apartment complexes mixed in predominantly single family home neighborhoods. That was a perceptive observation, since the Wizard used to live in one of those apartment complexes years ago. How would they be treated under this ordinance?
9) The ordinance is supposed to apply to streets classified as local or collector streets. Questions however were raised as to what is the meaning of words in the ordinance as abut.
So there you are gentle readers. The Wizard decided to leave early since he had spent a long day in productive wizardry already. I found out yesterday that the meeting lasted about another 30-45 minutes after I left. I also discovered that there is a very good reason for why former Mayor Bob Lanier expressed his concern about more planning and regulations. If you are scratching you head and wondering about how the sausage of this ordinance is going to turn out once it is fully ground out, then you should be dismayed to hear that I learned from one meeting attendee that there are no fewer than nineteen other ordinances whose reworkings are in the pipeline! But to quote one interested party:
Road activist Wendell Cox is being brought into Houston next week to talk to Houston City Council members on behalf of the new anti-planning effort led by former Mayor Bob Lanier, developer Richard Weekley, and construction executive Leo Linbeck, Jr. The purpose of the group, called “Houstonians for Responsible Growth,” is to stop what they call “more extensive planning and regulations” in the City of Houston.
Maybe this gentleman can explain to the public which ordinances are amongst the nineteen that are being revamped? What is their scope and how thoroughly are they being debated? After all, there is a supposed February 4, 2008 deadline for the ordinance to be tabled. Hopefully they won't be as drastic as the revisions to Chapter 19 were to groups like the Floodway Coalition. It would seem to me that if nineteen ordinances are being worked on simultaneously, and if those ordinances involve debate like the one I heard Wednesday evening, I too would share Mr. Lanier's concern about the amount (not to mention quality) of regulatory activity that has been taking place at City Hall in recent years. After all, what else are they talking about that we don't know about? After all, the revisions to Chapter 19 hit the Floodway Coalition folks like a bolt out of the blue.
In all, Houstonians should be aware that something rather remarkable has happened in this City. What we are witnessing is a challenge to the current Mayoral administration and Council for their apparent zeal for promulgating rules regarding land use. To be fair, Mayor White continues to insist that his directives are meant to be narrowly focused and that he is not in favor of broad zoning or land use regulatory initiatives. Alas, after witnessing what I saw last Wednesday evening, those assurances are not enough from making it unnerving to wonder about all those other ordinance changes and what they might mean for the future of our Great City.
Wizard
Today Houstonians woke up sounds of (soon to be erstwhile) Houston City Council member Carol Alvarado railing against terms limits in Houston's paper of note. And this performance after she joined Ada Edwards in complaining about term limits in Council just days ago.
What actually promoted the Wizard to write this epistle was not Ms. Alvarado's diatribe against term limits. It was a statement that she wrote in her editorial:
I believe that neighborhoods advocate through their elected officials. Their elected officials are accountable and they want them to be knowledgeable about city government. They want their elected officials to use their knowledge and experience that they have gained to help make their neighborhood and communities better and safer.
The Wizard knows many things. I now shall share a story with you gentle readers about a conversation that I had with a pair of gentlemen whom I met at a Christmas party that I attended about 10 days ago. These two men told me that they live in downtown Houston and therefore happen to live in District I, which is the district that Carol represented. They proceeded to tell me of a tale where they had some small issue they wanted help with (they did not exactly share with me what that issue was), so they contacted Ms. Alvarado and asked for her to handle the matter. According to these two gentlemen, who happened to have central (or eastern-central) European surnames, Ms. Alvarado then asked who they were. Upon learning their names, she then proceeded to hang up on them. In their words, "if you don't have a Hispanic surname, then she wouldn't lift a finger to help you."
Hmmm. So much for neighborhoods advocating through their elected officials.
But what about term limits? The Wizard is actually a bit of a fence sitter when it comes to setting arbitrary tenures on a politician's time in office. Ms. Alvarado joins former Mayor Lee Brown and a few others who have whined about the various ills allegedly surrounding term limits, including not having enough time to learn the ropes, worrying about future unemployment, not having enough time to push through projects, and so forth. Those are some interesting charges, but one forgets that the Wizard is a historically minded fellow and hence it is time to pull out the lens of history to see how well these charges hold up.
To note, Houston has had term limits on public officeholders since 1992, when we Houstonians passed them, having been caught up in a wave of term limiting ballot measures which briefly swept the country in the early 1990's. The Wizard remembers, in a long forgotten piece of American political lore, that some explored during that time whether members of Congress could be term limited. However that idea seems to have sunk under U.S. Constitutional arguments.
But I digress. What of major projects being held up due to term limits? Intercontinental Airport (oops - George Bush, I'm showing my age here) has been expanded since 1992. The City has completed (albeit with vast cost overruns and delays) street reconstruction of downtown Houston and various sports temples. The first section of the Kirby storm sewer project was done during 2001 - 2004 and the next awaits. I'm not really sure I can buy that argument.
And to continue, if one views the completion of such major projects like Intercontinental airport, we see that it was Mayor Louis Cutrer's administration who started the project, but Ms. Alvarado's assertion that the impetus and continuity on public works projects is lost through term limits - or on the really important ones - just doesn't hold up. In fact it is amazing that anyone who is as intimate with politics as Ms. Alvarado is would make such a statement. As it was, it was Louie Welch's administration that oversaw the completion and opening of the airport. Big important public works projects take on a life of their own, apart from that of any particular officeholder.
Moreover, shining the lens of history on term limits, I introduce into the record, some very helpful websites on Houston's history. This page shows Houston's mayors since 1900 (here is another one), and this website shows Houston's City Controllers. A cursory glance at Houston's mayors shows that only 3 of Houston's 19 mayors between 1900 and 1992 survived to serve more than six consecutive years in office at a stretch before the imposition of term limits. That matters due to Houston's strong mayor form of government. The Wizard thinks that this is some pretty solid evidence of fierce political competition for a powerful job.
A similar exercise, when carried against the City Controller's office, shows that of Houston 14 Controllers since 1903, six served for six years or longer, though the individuals who held the job have had a much more varied history in terms of their tenures.
It is a bit taxing to investigate the fates of Houston's council members over time, but I do know that District A was represented by Larry McKaskle for 20 consecutive years before being unseated by Helen Huey in 1991. However, there is the infamous example of Ben Reyes, who served from 1979-1995, but was convicted of taking over $50,000 in order to influence the outcome of the downtown convention center.
And then there is the issue of the items she lists as being of importance; garbage, streets, parks, sports venues, and so forth. One does have to remember that it is quite possible for private society to provide for these goods. There is nothing written in stone that says that government is to make for provision of these things. I live in a condominium complex where we contract for our own trash pickup. Despite Peter Brown's recent compulsion to force developers to provide for park space, one has to remember that Houston has for generations had benefactors donate park space for the city. The wealthy benefactors of sports venues could very easily afford to build their own temples.
A better question as to the effects of term limits would be to ask what really would have been different had term limits not been imposed? Term limits were imposed in 1992, when Bob Lanier was elected. One possible outcome had not term limits been implemented would have been that Lanier would have bled Metro's $750 million cash horde completely dry through the transfer to police provision. It is quite possible that the Main Street rail line would not have been built. It may have been that the City's financial problems, which were substantially racked up during the tenure of Lee Brown, might not have been as acute as they are now. Some aspects of the Smart Growth agenda may have been delayed or not implemented.
One notable aspect to the term limits question is what I perceive to be a lack of political competition once an officeholder gains office. Since 1992, once a Mayor has won election, there has been only one really competitive mid-term challenge, that of Orlando Sanchez who challenged Lee Brown in 2001. Lloyd Kelley lost the Controller's office after one term in 1997, but mostly after he committed a number of political missteps. Most council members have not faced substantial challenges during their tenures once they gained office.
Another fear is that given that an officeholder will only have a limited time in office, they may try to use that time to plunder the public purse as quickly as possible before their time runs out.
Then there is the issue of them looking forward towards their futures rather than concentrating on what they are doing today. It would seem to me that the officeholder's future rests substantially on whether the officeholder in question really has any job skills they can fall back on once they leave office. Mr. Cutrer was a practicing attorney who returned to private practice, as did Fred Hoffeinz. Bob Lanier has long been in the real estate development business. The logic here is that the people who do not have established careers outside of public office would be the ones who would be shouting the loudest about being term limited for fear of unemployment.
So, I would submit that a compromise to the term limits question would be to extend the time of tenure to perhaps 10-12 years. This would reopen the issue that if an officeholder gains office, then opponents would have to consider the fact that they would have to deal with their opposition holding power for that period of time, rather than merely waiting for a few years, watching officeholders come and go until the next person comes along. It is quite possible that most officeholders would not even make it through their entire tenure because of reinvigorated political competition. Surely a decade or a bit more in office should be enough time for those who wish to pursue municipal office to accomplish at least some of what they want.
Then there is the issue of why people seek office to begin with. Alvarado has made a number of statements to the effect that she is concerned with pollution issues in the East End. To me, that signals that she should have been running for a state representative post where she would have more say over such matters, rather than that of a municipal City Council seat. Maybe, as Anne suggests, the City's loss will be the state's gain. As one person noted, there you go Carol. It's time to turn the page and for you to run for Mr. Noreiga's seat.
Sigh...
Wizard
Yesterday afternoon found the Wizard rearranging portions of his vast personal library of books when I stumbled across a book which I have not read in some 10 years: Marguerite Johnston's Houston the Unknown City, 1836 - 1946. In the Wizard's view, Ms. Johnston's history book is really more of a collection of journalistic accounts of Houston's early history, but all authors have their individual writing styles so you take what you can and go with the flow.
Today's epistle is a brief encapsulation of chapter 28 of Ms. Johnston's tome, which she entitled Automobiles, an Unnoticed Revolution. Packed in those six and one half pages are early accounts of what the world was like when automobiles were entirely new.
Ms. Johnston repeats an observation which Robert Bruegmann wrote in Sprawl, namely that motorized automobiles and trucks did not replace rail. What automobiles replaced were horse drawn transport. To quote Ms. Johnston:
In 1900, horse-drawn carriages, mule-drawn wagons, and electric streetcars were all anyone could need for transportation. Automobiles came into Houston as a sport, and an athletic and adventurous one at that. Nobody predicted that within twenty years, automobiles and horses would have traded places - the car to be driven for daily transportation and the horse to be ridden on fine mornings as exercise for Houston ladies and gentlemen. Very few foresaw that these would swell in number to provide a new use for the oil gushing up out of the ground at Spindletop.
Ms. Johnston wrote that the automobile age began quietly, a vehicle acquired here and there. She writes that by December 21, 1901, the Houston Chronicle was able to write that :
Automobiles have come to Houston... For more than a months now these agile, swift-moving steam machines have been dashing back and forth over the downtown streets.
Our socialite author then goes on to tell her readers that horse livery stables and blacksmith shops all over Houston stood ready to rescue horse drawn vehicles with broken axles or horses who had lost their shoes, but that nothing of the sort existed for these new fangled vehicles. Indeed part of what made all of this so amazing was that in the beginning there was no supporting infrastructure for motorized transportation.
Ms. Johnston tells of how C.L.Bering made a cross country trip in a car in 1903 and was cheered in every town he passed through. April 1, 1903 (appropriately) saw the first record of a Houstonian getting ticketed and fined $10 for "fast driving down Main Street." By 1906, Houston had 80 automobiles. On June 21, 1909, the Houston Chronicle reported that:
The first local party of automobilists to successfully make a trip from Houston to Galveston and return in a single day made the run on Sunday, leaving here at 6 o'clock in the morning... returning ... about 9 o'clock in the evening."
She then goes on to describe how such country trips were no mean feat, due to the fact that the roads were usually dirt ones, with wheel ruts, no maps, and no signposts. The trip to Austin involved trips opening gates through private property! Ms. Johnston writes of Julian Huxley (yes, that Julian Huxley!), who at the time was teaching at the Rice Institute. Mr. Huxley bought a Model T for 100 pounds ($5,400 - $10,700 in 2006 dollars) when he was in Texas and later wrote of it:
It was a gallant little machine which I could drive across the prairies. In the winter vacation, I drove with a colleague in my new car to see Stark Young, professor of comparative literature at the State University at Austin...
This important route from Houston to Austin soon turned into a dirt road, so bad that at one swampy place I had to turn off into a field.
Ms. Johnston' goes on to write that Dr. Huxley got stuck in the mud on that hapless trip.
From 1906 to 1910, the number of licensed automobile owners in Houston increased 10 times. From 1910 to 1913, the number increased another 5 times on top of that. There were 4,143 autos in Houston by 1913. Ms. Johnston wrote that cars were starting to replace carriage horses in the stable at the back of the property. She wrote that saddle horses held out for another two decades.
Modes of death changed. Deaths incurred from runaway horses, animal bites, and diseases were replaced by automobile accidents. Amongst Houston's early fatalities was nine year old LaRue Sachs, who was killed by a motorist. La Rue Street, located off of West Dallas near Waugh Drive, is named after her.
Ms. Johnston goes on to describe what it was like to actually operate and ride in early automobiles, saying that glass windows and the hard top and not yet come. Dusters and goggles were part of the driver's uniform. The ladies wore scarves over their hats to counter the stiff breeze from traveling 30-40 miles per hour. Lap robes were common. Other perils awaiting those intrepid new car buyers included flat tires which were commonplace. Patching holes in inner tubes was a skill that many young men of the era learned fairly quickly.
The crankshafts were located in front under the radiators. Turning them often required an adult male's physical strength and it was harder to turn them over in winter time. Some covered the hoods of their cars with blankets or lap robes to keep the lubricants from congealing. On some really cold mornings, motorists would light up charcoal heaters under radiators.
Electric cars were out and about, competing with the gasoline powered ones. Some well known figures in Houston like Mrs. Albert Bath and Mrs. Will Clayton drove electric cars, where Ms. Johnston notes that these vehicles needed to be plugged in and recharged after daily runs.
Running boards were another frequent feature of cars of the era, noting that children and young people would sometimes hang on to them for short trips. Running boards were done away with as newer cars were designed with more streamlining.
Then one day, a fellow named George Hawkins decided to build a garage attached directly to his house. He persuaded developers to push 10 1/2 Street through to his driveway. More of that was to follow.
Ms. Johnston's chapter is a great read. She does not, however, discuss observations such as that motorized transportation use is strongly positively correlated with incomes, and that accordingly the adoption of automobiles had much to do with rising incomes and living standards. However her writings do give insight as to how much trouble people were willing to put up with in those early days towards operating an automobile. In fact one could make the observation that the hassles our ancestors faced in operating motorized transportation were merely a tradeoff and may have been less than the hassles they faced in the upkeep of horses and wagons. Her work also shows that the people of that era created an entire operating infrastructure for automobiles within a manner of a few decades, something that should put to sleep any worries about the future of having to arrange a new infrastructure to support ethanol fuels from cellulose (ethanol absorbs water), or having to produce electricity from hundreds or thousands of square miles of solar panels or wind turbines. When it makes economic sense to do so, then those innovations will come.
Wizard
As anyone who has been following the news in America over the past year, two of the biggest news stories have been turbulence in housing markets across the land, and what is the the story with petroleum prices. Tory wrote a blog entry back in August 2007 which raised questions on housing and commuting costs in American cities. In turn, his blog post linked to a story carried in Forbes about housing and commuting costs throughout the land. Naturally, much was made about commuting in Houston eating up a substantial part of our household budgets around here.
The Wizard has never put too much stock in such debates, indeed your learned commentator did not even bother to reply to Tory's post. Nor does yours truly think very highly of those who rage about transportation costs incurred from automobile use. And why, pray tell, is that? Let's just pay a visit to a very helpful and insightful website which reveals much: The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics web page which describes household consumer spending over the past 100 years.
Before going any further, we should remind ourselves that the figures from 100 years ago on household consumption are - well - just that. They are 100 years old. Governments of course have been collecting information on their respective populaces for a very long time. Still, there are as always the quality of that information, but the BLS does state that their statistical information on household expenditures for residents in Boston and New York City are amongst the oldest pieces of information that they have been continuously collecting and are of considerable interest when thinking of such issues.
So what does the Wizard believe are the observations of greatest import when it comes to household expenditures since 1900?
1) Rising incomes. American household incomes have gone up 10 fold or more since 1900. Budget constraints have been pushed outwards to astronomical levels. One very famous economist strongly believed - even during the depths of the Depression - that this massive accumulation of human wealth would continue. Regardless of what else you may think of him, on this issue he was absolutely correct.
2) Reduction in family size. The mean size of an American household was 5 people in 1900, whereas it was 2.6 people in 2000. The ramifications of the drop in the size of households cannot be underestimated. In 1901, the BLS says that American households spent some 42 percent of their household budgets on food, but 22 percent on housing (29 percent in Boston).
But reduction in household size also rolls over into housing markets. In the short run, the social demand curve for housing is very inelastic. And why is that? The reason is that very few people are willing to sleep outdoors or in their cars at night. In Houston, there are an estimated 10,000 homeless people out of an urban area of some 4 million people. When I read urban economics with Barton Smith, we discussed the issue of budget constraints one day and he said that poor people are often willing to part with 50 percent (or even more) of their incomes on making sure there is a roof over their heads. They are willing to double up if necessary, to move back in with family, or give up other consumer goods in order to make sure they do not have to face the elements.
Thus, reduction in household size allows for much greater monies for other goods, resulting in some very interesting changes in individual and household indifference curves. One thing I am very confident I can say is that housing is a normal good, as is spending on transportation.
My observations find confirmation if one studies BLS data on household spending for housing and transportation over time. The 1934-1936 data is the first time the BLS displays data for transportation expenditures. The U.S. household percentage was 8.3 percent, while the Boston and New York figures were 5.1 and 5.7 percent. The 1960-1961 data show that U.S. household expenditures for transportation were 14.7 percent, while New York households spent 10.7 percent and Bostonians spent 13.5 percent. The 1984-1985 data show that transportation spending was 19.6 percent, 15.8 percent for New York and 19.3 percent for Boston. The 2002-2003 transportation figures were 19.1 percent for the U.S., 15.4 percent for New York and 17.3 percent for Boston.
The food budget fell from 42 percent in 1901 to 33-36 percent in 1936, then to 24-28 percent in 1960-61, 12-16 percent by 1984-85. Food budgets have stayed at 13 percent since then.
Housing expenditures rose from 23 percent in 1901 (29 percent in Boston) to 32-35 percent by 1934-1936. They stayed at 30 percent in the 1960-61 and 1984-85 periods. They rose however by 2002-03 32 percent across the U.S, and 36-37 percent in Boston and New York.
So what can we say about all of this, besides the fact that housing and transportation are normal goods? It can be pointed out that food production has increased dramatically with modern agricultural methods. Some have pointed out that fossil fuels have much to do with this in terms of providing fertilizer, pesticides, and farm machinery fuel, but one has to wonder whether there are substitutes for these? Can genetic manipulation of crops provide even greater crop yields? The Wizard is watching the work of one man in particular to see what holds in store for the future, not only for agriculture production, but for future liquid fuel production and a lot of other items as well.
But I digress. Clearly household budgeting for food would fall with the decline of family size regardless of any other factors. Also, it does help to remember that not only was food a bigger part of family budgets 100 years ago, but to reiterate that family incomes themselves were lower! Even if our children were to see an era of rising food prices due to an alleged decline in the amount of fossil fuels or phosphorus available (and an implied decline in agricultural productivity), is that not to mean that we cannot put land back into agricultural use?
I ask questions like this because what all of this shows is that there are a number of issues that those who see nothing but doom and gloom for man's future seem to not consider. We do not know what future incomes (and hence household budget constraints) will be; we do not know what technological improvements will happen, nor do we know exactly how fast they will happen (and they may happen very quickly!); we do not know what percentages of household budgets people in the future will be willing to allocate towards various desires.
Are you just dying to see the world's stock of petroleum to run low so that people will stop driving gasoline powered cars, knowing that electric cars are more expensive? Did you ever think that the automobile manufacturers might consider allowing people to carry an 8 year car note instead of 5 years? Did you ever think that Americans might consider downsizing their average house sizes from 2,300 square feet to 1,700 square feet, and perhaps cutting down the size of their house notes 25 percent in the process? If doing so results in a drop in the amount they are carrying on their mortgage by $50,000, that would result in a drop of $300 per month every month for 30 years, if a mortgage is carried at six percent interest. And what will people do with that extra $300 per month? They just might spend it carrying a note on a $35,000 flex fuel car which might be powered up during their work day by an electrical outlet that is provided by their employer's parking lot, but we don't know that do we?
And that is the reason why the Wizard did not put much effort to get worked up about the Forbes article, nor do I worry about such things as how much of American household budgets go towards transportation costs, food costs, or any of the other things that work other people who really have nothing else to worry about into a lather. I am concerned about whether people try to make certain household expenditures more expensive than they need be because of political or aesthetic preferences. People will make adjustments as they want or need to do so, but why force them to make tradeoff decisions that they otherwise might not need to? I would have much more to be concerned about had suffered the genuine misfortune, like 80 percent of humanity, of having been born in a really poor country.
Wizard.
This past Wednesday, December 12, 2007, HPRA member Brooks Porter was featured in the Wall Street Journal in a story entitled Whose Beach Is This Anyway? Now we humble property rights advocates here in Houston have to deal with the fact that one of our members is world famous!
Amusement aside, as can be read from the story, Mr. Brooks and his staunch hold out neighbors have been fighting a property rights battle for some years now. At stake is the fact that Mr. Brooks purchased a pair of beach houses 25 years ago, but over time the Gulf of Mexico has slowly eroded away the beach at a rate of several feet per year. Now their homes lie within the vegetation line, ergo they are on the beach which is open access as per the 1959 Texas Open Beaches Act. Some of the holdouts basically want the State of Texas to buy them out, while others absolutely refuse to move at all. They say that State action to move the Brazos River has altered water flows which have greatly hastened beach erosion. Meanwhile, the Open Beaches Act apparently makes little provision for issues like beach erosion.
But as one might expect about the political classes, the Great State of Texas isn't about to pay up for a fully valued condemnation, something I have often discovered is the case when governments face the prospect of having to actually pay for swiping things away from people. As can be denoted from the story, the State is willing to pay money for relocation costs only.
Needlessly making life annoying for the beach home owners is the fact that the Texas Surf Riders Association asked (and was allowed) to join the suit on the side of the State. It seems the Surf Riders group has done rather well for itself over the years suing various property groups. The accompanying film shows a member of the Surf Riders complaining about rebar and septic tanks left on the beaches, but rebar was put in place by villages and those septic tanks could be found from anywhere and put on the beach for dramatic purposes.
Moreover, I have an incredibly hard time understanding how it is that the Surf Riders would get wound up by this. Unless the homeowners would actually try to define away the entire beach as their own property (something not talked about in the story), then as an interested bystander, it seems to me that both groups could co-exist. The homeowners could get their homes, while the Surf Riders and beach goers get their beach access. What's the problem?
As an advocate of property rights, I have a hard time understanding how the State cannot cough up money for a full condemnation buyout of some of the hold outs who may accept a full buyout offer. If the Act also makes little provision for erosion (and I have to admit I have not read the Act while writing this), then the issue needs to be sorely revisited before more people get caught up in problems like this.
Then there's a philosophical issue that certain groups say that property rights are defined and granted by society to members of that society. If that is the case, then I ask such people a rhetorical question. That would be that if property rights are bestowed by some act of noblesse oblige by society, then it would seem that property rights can be swiped away by society by effectively defining them away, can they not? That indeed is what is going on here and in every place where zoning is in effect.
Wizard
Oh my goodness! Even the Wizard didn't foresee this bolt from out of the blue cast by Tory. $1.8 billion for a 14 mile light rail line? $130 million per mile for light rail? Richmond and Wheeler costing $1.3 billion?
Just this past week I wrote about Metro's $3 billion limousine. Now, 30 miles at $130 million per mile is $3.9 billion. Add in the $520 million Main Street train and the $300 million Intermodal temple and you have a $4.7 billion limousine. I tried to show an argument that Metro could afford to field 500 buses on the road for a $3 billion limousine. Now the opportunity costs of the rail build out would mean we could probably operate 800 - 1,000 new buses everyday out on the road instead of 500. Instead, we have 18 rail cars on Main and Frank Wilson wants to buy another 100.
Folks, this is nothing short of a disaster! For American cities that were built in the age of the automobile, we need to completely reorient our public transportation tax dollars towards building up massive investment trusts for operations purposes - which would be inviolate and could not be touched by elected officials - and get them completely away from flashy transit monuments. Leave the massive capital spending for New York's subways and maybe Chicago. As described in my previous post, at a $4.7 billion we could acquire and operate 5 or more times as many additional buses out on the road as rail cars - indeed we could completely bury all of Metro's five rail lines with two times as many additional buses as rail cars - and still have some 400 or more new buses left over for the entire rest of the City. This would cut down wait times everywhere, give us a vastly more nimble transit system that would serve the entire city, rather than have a few dozen miles of trains going nowhere near where I need to go and a shriveled, truncated bus system which serves no other purpose other than to feed a greedy and rigid set of trains.
Friday, December 7, 2007, will be a day which will live in Houston Transit Infamy. Yes gentle readers, there will be even more Fireballs, Lightning Bolts, and Hell Storms yet to come.
Addendum edit - December 8, 2007: The news came across last week about the FTA's decision to require Metro to resubmit documentation and allow public comments on the North and Southeast alignments. I don't care if you are all for railroading the city and for violating the property rights of the home and business owners along the corridors by stuffing them into 500 yard radial condemnation zones which will surround all of the train stations. As a taxpayer, you should be thankful for the FTA's decision to do this.
Wizard
So the other day, I found myself watching the local municipal channel and saw the hearings on the Metro board decision to railroad Richmond and Wheeler Avenues. This is part of the proposed 30.1 mile expansion of the current Main Street rail line, which itself cost $520 million and not the advertised $324 million (and of which Frank Wilson immediately asked for another $104 million to upgrade). The advertised price of the expansion is $2.2 billion, but other documentation I have in my possession (and of which I will write about below) states that another cost estimate will be $2.6 billion (including the estimated 300 million for the Northside Intermodal temple). Either way, for further purposes, I will go with the $3 billion for the 37.5 miles of rail since nearly all transportation infrastructure projects have cost overruns.
So what to make of all of this? The point of this article is to make some rough back of a napkin comparisons of what the opportunity costs of spending $3 billion on 37 miles of rail verses what could be done with that amount of money with alternative forms of public transportation. It is also to air my thoughts on this whole mess.
Addendum edit - December 8, 2007: Please read my updated entry on Metro's $3 billion $4.7 billion limousine.
On August 8, 2007, the Examiner News, one of the Houston Community Newspapers, carried a story about a transportation solution that was implemented for the needy (one day access can be purchased to access the story) which are served by the Spring Branch Family Development Center of Houston and interviewed its director, a man by the name of Richardo Barnes. As it is, the SBFDC services immigrants studying English to improve themselves, single mothers and those who are otherwise struggling financially.
Mr. Barnes tells of how he has been on a crusade to get Harris County Metro to implement a series of bus routes to better serve the Spring Branch area. He correctly notes that the agency - scandalously in my view - does not run a regular bus route along Hillcroft, which turns into Voss road as it goes through Memorial, and into Spring Branch. Hence the agency does not even have a way to connect would be patrons from the heart of the Galleria to Spring Branch. It also does not have a direct route running along Chimney Rock, which turns into Wirt Road as it reaches Spring Branch. More to the point, Mr. Barnes believes that the Spring Branch area would better be served by a circulator route. I grew up in Spring Branch and cannot agree with him more. Instead, the agency makes sure that the routes in the area make it to the nearby transit center.
So what has Mr. Barnes done instead? Well, the Examiner article goes on to say that his Center received an anonymous donation of $60,000 to purchase a bus from Texas Bus Sales. Said Barnes,
The bus goes where people need to go and the schedule is made up based on their needs. "Sometimes they have to compromise a bit," he said. "If several people need to go grocery shopping, we ask that they go at the same time."
Barnes illustrates what some of his clients are up against by pointing out that a woman who lives in an apartment near Interstate 10 and Gessner must take three Metro buses in order to bring her baby to the WIC clinic.
"The trip takes about three hours," he said. "Our bus can pick them up and have them here in 20 minutes."
Barnes went on to say that there are more than 250 people who have signed up for the bus service and that they pay $10 per month. Their monthly fee barely pays for gas, however one might ask how much does it cost per month to maintain the bus?
The question of what to do here could use some reasonable framing. In Metro's National Transit Database profile for both 2004 and 2005, the agency states that the 7.5 mile MetroRail line costs $14 million per year to operate. This is more or less in line with the annual operating costs of other rail lines, which often take about 2-5 percent per annum of original capital costs to operate. Or, I should say that they do in their early years, until it comes time to do major maintenance of switchgear, signaling, wear out on rail cars, and so on. Still, a reasonable estimate will be that in its early years of operation, the 37.5 miles of trains will cost some $60-70 million - give or take some millions - per year to operate. Bear in mind that the agency has been stating that the ticket revenues for the train have been less than $2 million per year. This matters because that implies the agency has not been even coming close to collecting the annual operating expenses needed to operate the Main Street train, much less having those same passengers pay for the capital costs of building the train. This in turn leaves open the long run specter of the agency having to break its 2003 Metro Solutions bond election promise that it would not have to raise taxes in order to implement its plans. However, what rail fans are counting on is that once the rail tracks are in place, there will be - how shall I say - facts on the ground, which will force matters in the future and for which people will say that we have sunk those costs, we can't just tear them up now!
Moving onwards. The same NTD profiles state that for Metro to operate its 1,000 buses (the agency has over 1,400 buses in its fleet, 20% plus of which are spares), cost $263 million in 2005. This implies that the annual cost per year to operate a bus is some $250,000. This might seem outrageous, but maybe not. If you pay a bus driver $50,000 - $60,000 total compensation (wages, benefits, health care, 401k) per annum, that it would take 2 bus drivers to operate a bus for 18 hours per day, then thrown in fuel costs and maintenance, then that figure may well be accurate. I do have it on good word that "typical" buses operated by mass transit agencies get about 3.5 miles per gallon, bearing in mind that buses are the ultimate stop and go vehicles when operating in urban areas. Throw in the fuel costs have gone up about $1 per gallon since 2004-2005 and you are probably looking at another $20,000 per year (for $270,000), assuming that the bus runs 180 miles (10 mph for 18 hours) per day at 3.5 mpg.
Now then, believe it or not one of my biggest complaints against Metro as it has been run all these years has nothing to do with rail. It has to do with how
